Various international legal aspects of iGaming

Abstract

Gambling was for centuries prohibited in Malta by law. In civil law no action lies for the recovery of gaming debts and criminal law states that betting or wagering is a contravention affecting public order. Nevertheless a number of states found that if gambling were to be regulated as in the cases of tobacco and alcohol, then taxes could be generated for government treasuries. This intimate relationship between public abhorrence of gambling, tobacco and alcohol and the state's thirst for taxes permeates a number of regulations domestically as well as at the European level. Of course at different times regulation either got stricter or more lax depending not solely on public moral attitudes but also on particular governments' thirst for revenue. This thesis proposes to examine first the difficulties for legal regulation created by gambling through this new means of communication - the internet. The main difficulty of jurisdiction is tackled both from a public and private international law perspective as well as trom a sott law dimension. In Chapter 2 a fundamental distinction is drawn between prohibitory and regulatory challenges to internet gambling. In Chapter 3 the main challenge to regulating remote gaming in the Union is found in two fundamental principles, that is, the principle ot treedom to provide and receive cross-border services and the principle of freedom of establishment. The lack of success of unifying European gambling law is only the other side of the same coin namely the lack ot success at fiscal harmonisation in the Union. In the second part of the third Chapter the six key judgements of the European Court of Justice are analysed as creeping judicial legislation at European Union level. Until unification of European gambling laws EU states have to be wary of not relying absolutely on their own regulatory regimes because the ECJ has created judge- made-law in between. Finally in Chapter 4 Malta's gambling regulations and licences and case-law are closely examined.