Hopes for Swedish gambling bill dashed
Launch of new investigation kills chance of legislation being introduced before 2014 elections
Sweden’s Minister for Financial Markets has admitted the government will not publish a bill to regulate the country’s online gambling market during the current parliamentary term.
In an address to the Swedish parliament’s, Culture Committee Minister Peter Norman said a new investigation would be launched to study gambling legislation developed by neighbouring countries including Denmark, Norway, Finland and Germany. This, he said, will allow the government to “draw conclusions” and “form its own framework”.
But Norman said with the investigation likely to take at least two years no legislation will be introduced during the current parliamentary term, which will end in September next year. He admitted the government preferred to take a cautious approach to the issue, and that its key focus was to tackle social issues caused by gambling, even expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of progress.
“Though we have a situation we are not entirely happy with, there is so much to consider with regards to gambling issues that we need to take some time to study our neighbours’ behavior,” Norman said.
He pledged to “strengthen the [current] Lotteries Act with the introduction of sanctions for operators that failed to comply with a ban on gambling advertising, age restrictions on gambling games and player verification controls”.
However, a source close to the matter said that the decision to launch another investigation could be viewed as a move to avoid dealing with the issue in the lead-up to next year’s general election.
eGR‘s source pointed to “a lack of concrete proposals on how investigations will be carried out”, and said it could take “until 2017″ to pass regulation into law.
“Once the investigation is completed, any legislation have to be submitted to the European Commission, and the need a period for notifications and consultation pushes the process back more than two years,” they added.
One operator association spokesman suggested that operators with a presence in the Swedish market could see the lack of progress as a positive, as the lack of regulation would help maintain profits from the market.
However, one industry commentator speaking to eGR argued that the market was actually being hindered by a lack of regulation, highlighting the fact the Swedish online gambling market’s growth had slowed to around 1% year-on-year in its Q1 figures for 2013.