This article is an opinion piece by Lee Hills, CEO of the iGaming regulatory advisory service SolutionsHub.
Every few years, the idea of EU-wide gambling regulation returns, often presented as a way to improve consumer protection or create common standards across the single market. The Markers of Harm framework shows how multi-jurisdictional cooperation can work when there’s shared will. But cooperation is not the same as centralised regulation, and that distinction matters.
Gambling sits firmly within national competence under Article 5 TEU’s principle of subsidiarity. EU legislation, such as anti-money-laundering directives and data-protection rules, does touch gambling operators, but it does not harmonise how gambling itself is regulated. Article 114 TFEU allows internal market measures but excludes fiscal provisions and activities linked to public morality, leaving no clear legislative base for EU-wide harmonisation. There is no appetite from Member States to hand that authority upward.
The explanation lies in how the EU treaties divide authority between Brussels and the Member States.
France shows why EU gambling harmonisation struggles
France’s approach to online gambling regulation tells you everything you need to know about why EU-wide gambling law will not happen.
When France opened its online gambling market in 2010, the initial framework was built around taxation and market control. The focus was fiscal. But that structure immediately ran into EU scrutiny because it created barriers to cross-border services without a clear public interest justification.
The regime only stabilised once France reframed the legislation around consumer protection and responsible gambling. When you ground your restrictions in safeguarding players and preventing harm, you build a stronger legal case. Frameworks built mainly around taxation struggle under EU law, while those grounded in consumer protection tend to stand up much better.
When Member States structure their regimes around clearly articulated consumer-protection objectives, they retain a wide margin of regulatory discretion under EU law. Gambling has repeatedly been recognised by the Court of Justice as an area where cultural, moral and social considerations differ significantly between countries, meaning national authorities are entitled to determine their own level of protection. As long as restrictions are proportionate and credibly linked to consumer protection, Member States therefore retain the legal space to regulate their gambling markets independently, making the prospect of a single EU-wide regime increasingly remote.
That is why Member States present gambling regulation as a matter of harm prevention rather than revenue optimisation, at least formally. The framing matters because the treaties give you space to regulate gambling if you can justify it on public interest grounds.
What European case law says about gambling rules
The European Court of Justice has been consistent on this for two decades.
In Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional v Bwin (C-42/07), the Court made clear that Member States can restrict gambling services if those restrictions are justified by overriding reasons in the public interest, provided they’re proportionate and applied consistently.
Gambelli (C-243/01) reinforced the same principle.
National restrictions are permissible where they genuinely aim to reduce gambling opportunities or prevent disorder, but they fall apart if the state simultaneously promotes domestic gambling for revenue.
Placanica (C-338/04) went further. The Court said that if you’re going to restrict foreign operators, your domestic regime needs to reflect the same protective intent. You cannot block competition while expanding your own market. The motive has to be coherent.
Taken together, these seek to strike a balance between national sovereignty and EU market freedoms. They allow Member States to design and maintain their own gambling regulatory models where those rules are genuinely aimed at consumer protection and the reduction of harm, while preventing governments from using regulation as a disguised form of economic protectionism to shield domestic operators or maximise tax revenue.
When you read the cases side by side, the pattern becomes obvious. European courts allow governments to control gambling in their own markets, but only when those rules are genuinely about protecting the public and not blocking outside competition.
Why gambling is not a financial service
People sometimes point to financial services as a model. If banking, insurance and investment firms can operate across the EU under passporting regimes, why not gambling?
Banks are usually the comparison, as they can operate across borders because the rules that govern them are largely the same across the EU. Capital standards, supervision and financial safeguards are designed to work across jurisdictions, which makes mutual trust between regulators possible.
Gambling regulation works very differently from sectors like banking, where countries follow the same core supervisory rules. Gambling is shaped by national choices about risk, culture and public policy across Europe, and that truth is unlikely to change.
Unlike financial services, gambling is seen through a moral lens, with focus on public health and cultural attitudes. Different European countries take fundamentally different views on issues such as advertising, product design, player protection measures and even the social acceptability of gambling itself. Many states also use gambling revenue to fund national causes such as sport, heritage or public services, which further embeds regulation within domestic political priorities. These differences make the level of regulatory alignment required for passporting extremely difficult to achieve.
The difficulty is not technical at all. Gambling policy is driven by national choices about risk, freedom and social harm, and those choices vary widely across Europe. Those differences are not going away.
Why a single EU gambling system would never work
Even if the treaties allowed harmonisation, the practical obstacles would kill it.
Gambling tax structures vary wildly across Member States. Some tax gross gaming revenue. Others tax turnover instead. Some apply different rates to different products. The fiscal models are embedded in national budgets, and no finance ministry is handing that over to Brussels.
Redistribution adds another layer. In many jurisdictions, gambling revenue funds sports, culture, healthcare or social programmes. Those funding streams are politically sensitive. Governments will not surrender control of how gambling money flows, because that control underpins domestic policy priorities.
Then there’s moral policy. Gambling is not a neutral commercial activity. It touches questions of personal freedom, social harm, addiction and public order. Some Member States take a liberal view. Others are restrictive. A few ban most forms entirely.
Differences reflect deeply embedded social and political choices about how societies view gambling, risk and state responsibility for harm. Attempting to impose a single regulatory model across countries with fundamentally different moral and cultural attitudes toward gambling would quickly run into political resistance. It would require governments to surrender control over policies that sit squarely within their domestic social and public health agendas.
You cannot harmonise a sector where every government is navigating a different moral, fiscal and social terrain.
What cooperation between regulators actually looks like
The Markers of Harm framework shows what is possible when Member States cooperate without centralising. It provides shared language, common metrics and a basis for dialogue. That is cooperation done right, voluntary, proportionate and respectful of sovereignty.
Multi-jurisdictional efforts against black market gambling follow the same logic. When regulators work together to tackle unlicensed operators, they do not need Brussels to coordinate. They need information-sharing, aligned enforcement priorities and mutual recognition of each other’s licensing standards.
This is not a case for doing nothing. It is a case for doing what actually works.
Pan-EU regulation sounds neat in theory. In practice, it collapses on contact with the treaties, the case law, the fiscal realities and the cultural differences that define how gambling is understood across Europe.
Realistic cooperation in Europe is likely to continue to revolve around coordination rather than centralisation. Shared research, intelligence-sharing between regulators, common harm-reduction frameworks and cooperation against unlicensed operators can raise standards across the market without forcing Member States into a single regulatory model that ignores national realities and sovereignty issues.
Brussels is not going to regulate gambling across Europe, and pretending otherwise distracts from the real work that regulators should be doing. Progress will come from cooperation between national authorities, not from chasing the illusion of a single EU rulebook. — Lee Hills.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SiGMA News editorial team.
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