Italy’s Parliament gave a Master’s level seminar on dysfunction last week by accidentally banning igaming for a one-year period. The motion, which is expected to be reversed, called for a 12-month ban on the issuing of new gambling licenses and the suspension of active licenses.
Though details about how the bill actually gained any traction at all are scarce, here’s what we know so far.
Last week an Italian political party called Lega Nord introduced a motion aimed at curbing video terminal gambling addiction by banning their use in public places. The exact wording of the bill, however, cast a much larger net and included the aforementioned license bans and moratoriums.
Incredibly, enough MP’s either misunderstood the bill (or didn’t bother to read it all) and it wound up with enough votes to move on.
It’s a massive understatement to say that a move like this would cause some major harm to the fragile Italian economy. (For a complete rundown of all them, check out this great blog post from Giuilo Coraggio at jdsupra.com.)
To head off the inevitable lawsuits and EU trade commission complaints, the Italian Finance Ministry is moving rapidly to insure that the new measure does not go into effects and most observers think they’ll be successful.
As Americans, we’re hardly going to throw stones at incompetent lawmakers, but this is definitely one for the books.