A British online gambling casinos trade group, the Remote Gambling Association (RGA), has recently threatened to take legal action against the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.
The RGA, which represents many of the biggest and more popular British online gambling casinos, is seeking to legally contest a recent Italian law which prohibits ISPs from allowing Italian citizens access to foreign online gambling casinos.
The Italian Finance Act of 2006, which came into effect on the first of January, provided Italian internet service providers with a “blacklist” of online gambling casinos, to which they were ordered to deny access under penalty of stiff fines. If the internet providers allow access to any of the 500 or so online gambling casinos on the list, they face punitive charges of up to GBP 120,000.
The RGA claims that the act violates a 2003 European Union court ruling that member states may not limit cross- border online gambling casinos traffic, except on grounds of a moral objection. The RGA contends that the Italian law should have been submitted to a European body before it was put into effect.
The Italian government has not issued a comment on the RGA’s accusations.
Tags: casinos, online gambling