Law and Economics Professor Kalle Määttä was hired by the Finland Ministry of Health and External Affairs to draft a report on the problem of protecting chidren and gambling addicts.
His report could lead to a change in the Finland’s gambling law in 2008 and 2009, but also to comply with the EC decisions, although other seem to undermine it :
Here are some important ides of his report :
In his white paper, Professor Määttä suggests that it could be impossible to regulate foreign online gambling companies serving Finland, but says that gambling problems could be reduced by making it difficult for such companies to offer services there.
Professor Määttä offers three ways in which the government could achieve this:
The first would be to restrict the flow of funds to and from foreign gambling providers. The second would be to require internet service providers to block access to foreign gambling sites. The third would be to give consumers a legal right to recover their losses from foreign gambling sites if they were deemed illegal.
On the question of whether Finland would offer state-controlled online gambling in the event of foreign operators being banned, Mr. Paaso was unequivocal. “There will be no opportunities. The government will not offer something like the Swedish online poker site. It does not seem right, on the one hand offering online poker to your citizens, and on the other hand blocking others from doing the same.”
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