Europe’s bumper lottery set to roll across nine countries

By Anna McLauchlin and Peter Chapman

Date: 30/09/04

EUROMILLIONS, the lottery combining stakes from France, Spain and the UK, will expand to nine European countries on 8 October, shining a light on gambling in the EU.

Players in Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland will now be able to buy tickets for the jumbo lottery, which this week (1 October) has a jackpot prize of l29 million. But, as gambling is regulated at national level only, it took more than a year for the original three organizers - Loterias y Apuestas del Estado in Spain, Française des Jeux in France and the UK's Camelot - to enlarge.

"We are talking about 25 monopolies," says Philippe Vlaemminck, a lawyer from European State Lotteries and Toto Association in Lausanne.

"Euromillions now contains nine different lotteries subject to national rules and licensing agreements. They only combine the money received to make up the jackpot. The remainder stays in the country where it was handed over."

The European Commission has tried to open up the internal market for gambling but member states have opposed the move. EU governments are blocking plans to include lotteries in a 2001 proposal regulating sales promotions.

Ministers failed to reach agreement at the latest Competitiveness Council with Italy, for example, demanding that games be completely excluded from the draft.

Ministers will consider a new text of the proposal at the next Council on 25 November.

A battle is also looming over the draft directive on services, which was presented in January. In the current text, the Commission states that it is not the purpose of the law to affect monopolies, particularly gambling.

But the sector has not been excluded from the part of the directive dealing with establishment, which lawyers say causes confusion. Council working groups are currently considering the draft and the rapporteur drafting the European Parliament's view, Socialist MEP Evelyn Gebhardt, meets lobbyists on 4 October to gauge the views of interested parties.

Bookmakers are keen to see an open market for gambling, but governments are wary.

"Member states have been very good at lobbying on this," says a Commission official.

"The Commission would encourage cross border activity rather than discourage it but governments want to retain national control. It's an incredibly sensitive issue."

Governments fear that the amount of lottery money that they push into 'good causes' such as the arts, sport, national heritage and charities could be threatened by competition. But social protection is also at stake.

"Gambling is not a normal economic activity," explains Vlaeminck.

"Governments worry that if you allow anyone to offer betting services that will just lead to more gambling and then you have social problems of addiction and criminal activity, like fraud and money laundering. When it is kept to national level the money lost is at least re-invested into society."

Those governments which have agreed to allow their citizens to play Euromillions, he says, have decided that the risk of losing funds to a controlled European lottery is worth it if people choose to play it rather than risking money on illegal internet gambling.

Euromillions, the lottery combining stakes from France, Spain and the UK, expanded to nine European countries on 8 October 2004, after solving legal problems resulting from the differences in national gambling regulations.