The long-standing definition that exists for gambling activities in general in EU secondary legislation is that relied upon to exclude such services from the Electronic Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’)):
“gambling activities … involve wagering a stake with monetary value in games of chance, including lotteries and betting transactions.”
In later texts such as the Services Directive (Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market) and most recently in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (Directive 2010/13/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 March 2010 on the coordination of certain provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States concerning the provision of audiovisual media services (Audiovisual Media Services Directive)) a slightly different definition is “games of chance involving a stake representing a sum of money, including lotteries, betting and other forms of gambling services”. While the Anti-Money Laundering Directive(Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2005 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing) refers to the term ‘casino’ it does not define it.
To date, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in its rulings on games of chance has not given specific guidance on the interpretation of the definitions used in secondary legislation.
Source: europa.eu
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