France, The EU, The Meeting Place

Coming up soon will be the meeting between France and the European Commission where France will need to justify why they have a monopoly in online gambling. At this meeting France has indicated that they will concede to allow online gambling offered by outside operators, with some restrictions. These operators will need to have an office inside of France, however they will only bend as far as online gambling.

The meeting is taking place in Brussels between France and the European Commission, however while France may relax some of its positions there has been not mention of allowing online poker sites.

Casino operators in France feel that if poker operators were legal to operate in France it would save them their players who want to play poker and in order to do this these players find sites outside of the country in order to play online poker. The French government does not agree that this is what online gaming players are doing so that they might play online poker.

Negotiations between two major casino operators Barrière and their other online operator Partouche and France, along with the European Commission could last as long as a month.