Greek Gambling Laws Continue to Annoy European Commission

Recently Greece infuriated the European Union when the country announced that it may not sell its 34 percent stake in the national gambling monopoly OPAP, which was one of the agreed conditions for the financial bailout. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have once again helped Greece with over €100 billion, naturally with a set of requirements.

Greece seems to have forgotten the promises and threatened to refuse to sell its stake in the national gaming monopoly OPAP. Greek authorities are confident they can find funds elsewhere, once they become familiarized with the concept of 'buy low and sell high.' Currently, the Greek parliament is preparing to debate further changes to Greek gambling laws that will benefit OPAP at the expense of foreign operators.

European Commission has already refused the first draft of the new regulations, and will not be happy about these changes either, which will require foreign operators to be able to speak both modern and ancient Greek. Previously, the European Commission frowned upon several aspects of the proposed Greek laws, concerning among others online sportsbooks in Greece.

These include requiring licensees to create a Greek subsidiary, locate their servers on Greek territory, work with Greek banks exclusively, and observe a “blackout” time frame, when OPAP will continue to accept wagers from Greek punters.

Online gambling news in Greece learned that European Commission rejected these points of the draft Greek gambling law, stating that they “appear to restrict the freedom to provide services.”

It remains to be seen how the European Commission reacts to the latest developments within the Greek parliament’s hollow walls. It looks extremely unreasonable for a country to go against the wishes of its creditor only a month after receiving a huge bailout.