Member States Versus the European Union

Since the 1990s the European Court of Justice has provided an institutional backdrop from which the requirements of EU law regarding gambling regulation are evolving. Given the total absence of harmonisation, Member States are competent to regulate gambling conditional upon such regulation being compatible with EU law. This book analyses the regulatory approaches undertaken in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom regarding a variety of forms of online and offline gambling with a view to assessing the compatibility of these approaches. Furthermore it illustrates prevailing commonalities between the regimes and injects a degree of realism into the debate, softening the hard stance taken by stakeholders at opposite ends of the policy spectrum.