The EU Commission

As a general rule, only one institution has the ability and jurisdiction to propose and initiate new legislation, and that is the European Commission. It is the EU's independent executive arm and it is the chief target of the right2bet campaign.

Don't be confused, we're not after a European law change. There is no legislation that bans cross-border online betting. On the contrary, Article 49 EC states that all EU citizens should have the right to use services originating from anywhere in the EU, and that EU companies should have the right to offer these services to all EU citizens.

So what's the problem then? The problem is simple. The Commission isn't doing its job properly.

All we're asking is for the fundamental law to be put into practice in all EU Member States. The institution which can carry this out is the European Commission.

In a nutshell, the Commission's two primary roles are to initiate legislation and then if implemented, to ensure that all Member States are abiding by it.

Once the Commission proposes legislation, the bill needs to be passed through the European Parliament & The European Council. It is then passed back to the Commission to be enforced.

The Commission is composed of 27 unelected commissioners, each covering a different area of policy, one from each member state.

Jose Manuel Barroso is the current President of the Commission and he and all the other Commissioners are nominated by The Council of The European Union.

Their mandate is to act on the behalf of Europe as a whole, independent from their governments.

In other words, safeguarding the highly profitable state-run monopolies of their individual countires should not be a concern, whereas protecting the rights of all EU citizens should be.

It's not rocket science. The ratified laws are there for all to see in black and white, yet Barroso and his Commissioners thus far have refused to act sufficiently. So we're taking our protest to the Commission's doorstep, and we hope you'll join us.


Key Facts At A Glance