European Commission Investigates

The World Trade Organization is under investigation by the European Commision. The investigation is now coming to light and it has a lot to do with the fact that during the last United States administration a ban was put on online casino and therefore a lot of online casinos in Europe lost billions of Euros in revenue. The online casino industry was outraged by the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, but the reason for the investigation is because of the last minute changes made by the Bush Administration which sort of put the nail in the coffin for a lot of the internet gambling businesses abroad. The investigation will hopefully reveal whether or not the United States government had it out for the European gambling businesses.

The United States is being accused of targeting the European Union’s online casino operators. The motive being that companies continued to operate as if an anti online casino legislation never passed and not penalizing domestic companies for doing the same thing as the foreign ones. One of the companies that suffered a huge loss once the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was passed were Party Gaming and 888.com. Those two online casinos are companies that are traded on the open market but they had to withdraw their businesses from the United States as soon as the Act was passed.

The European Commission has a responsibility to oversee the trades for all of the 27 European Union nations. The Commission said that they would try to figure things out with the United States before they went all the way to the World Trade Organization with the investigation. Next month the European Commission plans on releasing their monthly report on their status which will include some details about their trip to Washington and their talks with the United States government. There may be more important issues for the United States right now than the online casino industry, but as far as the World Trade Organization and the European Commission are concerned, there are not. Although it has been said time and time again that taxation of online casinos would provide much needed tax revenue for the United States.