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New Online Casino Blocks in Place

The Estonian government just announced some incredibly controversial internet gambling policies that will effect immediately and essentially close the Estonian market to foreign online casinos until 2011. The European Commission has really attempted to work with the Estonian officials lately in efforts to ensure that newly planned and drafted Estonian regulations meet the free trade requirements of the European Union – that just doesn’t seem to have done any good in this case, however. The Estonian officials announced that all foreign online casino sites have been blacklisted for the rest of the year and Estonian gamblers will only have access to locally, state-run operations.

This sort of policy is in direct contravention of policies that the Commission has been strongly pushing for quite some time now. Although there are still a handful of EU member states that operate state gambling monopolies, the Commission has been quite eager to ensure that no new online casinos follow these same steps. Foreign online casino companies have long had open access to the Estonian market so long as the servers were located outside of Estonia. Now though, the state government has done a complete 180 on the rules and the Estonian Tax and Customs Board plans to block all foreign gaming sites until they can be properly licensed and controlled.

To take the situation even further, Estonia has formally announced a black list of all of the specific online casinos that are banned in the market. On this list are some major European operators who are currently accepting Estonian gamblers for play on their sites – sites that do not comply with this ban are facing hefty fines from the Board.