1. EC: Gambling study published
The study by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law on gambling within the European Internal Market commissioned by the European Commission (EC) has been published. It is intended to serve as the basis for further discussions on liberalising the gambling market.
The documents may be downloaded in full from the following website http://www.isdc.ch/en/default.asp.
Supplementary comments may be included until 22 May.
There will also be a meeting of stakeholders in Geneva on 8 May at which the results of the study are to be discussed with the parties concerned.
http://www.unil.ch/isdc2006
2. New proposal on Services Directive in the internal market
At the beginning of April the European Commission proposed a new version of the Services Directive in the Internal Market. Modifying the initial draft version from 2004, the new proposal integrated the about 1000 amendments the European Parliament decided upon in its February Plenary session (see Monthly Report March 2006).
The main objective of the Services Directive is still to reduce regulatory fragmentation of the internal market (national barriers) and to encourage and facilitate growth in cross-border service provision within the EU. Though, by incorporating the above mentioned modifications the scope of the directive has been diminished considerably. For instance, one of its major principles – the home country principle as a main facilitator of free service provision – was finally abandoned.
With regard to sport activities two passages in the directive are worth being highlighted:
Non profit making amateur sporting activities are of considerable social importance. They often pursue wholly social or recreational objectives. Thus they might not constitute economic activities within the meaning of Community law and fall outside the scope of this Directive.
This new approach allows for the exclusion of a significant part of sport activities from the scope of this directive.
In Article 2 some other domains – gambling amongst others – are excluded from the directives applicability (gambling activities which involve wagering a stake with pecuniary value in games of chance, including lotteries, gambling in casinos and betting transactions).
It might still be a long way to the final adoption of this directive as it is now up to the member states to give their remarks on the hitherto version. The European Parliament will hold its second reading at the end of 2006. It is yet considered probable that the new version will ultimately be accepted. A final adoption by the Council of the European Union is supposable for 2007 so that the directive could enter into force in 2009.
3. Sport aspects in draft programme Active European Citizenship
The European Parliament agreed upon the report of the Finnish MEP Hannu Takkula concerning the Active European Citizenship Programme 2007-2013 in its first reading.
During the preparation of this report the EU Sports Office achieved to present the need for implementing sport as a valuable instrument for the promotion of an active European citizenship. This is now successfully reflected in several text passages, mentioning explicitly sport, amateur sport clubs and European amateur sports events.
In the next step of the legal procedure the Council needs to find a common position and afterwards the Parliament has to finally adopt the text during a second reading. The EU Sports Office foresees new and various project possibilities for sport organisations occurring in the future budget line Active European Citizenship if the sport aspects are maintained as in the current version of the programme text.
In mid-April the European Commission published a call for pilot project proposals for the Active European Citizenship programme. The financial resources are though rather restricted and will be limited to a handful of projects. The call period will expire on May 31st.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/education_culture/activecitizenship/index_en.htm
