Games, Logico: “TAR Lazio accepts appeal against provision on expiry of concessions”

“The concessions were automatically considered to be extended until December 31, 2022 and the expiry provision by the Monopoly and Customs Agency under appeal is therefore canceled”. This, in summary, reports in a note the Logico association (Lega Operatori di Gioco on Canale Online), the decision taken by the second section of the Lazio TAR today, regarding the appeals presented by some online gaming operators that in recent months of 2020 had been notified of an act with which the Adm communicated the expiry of the concession. Already in the precautionary stage, underlines Logico, the same administrative authority had expressed itself to accept the first precautionary requests against the expiry of the concessions and suspend the provision of the Agency, underlining that Adm had not considered the provisions of the 2016 Stability Law or the realignment time, as of December 31, 2022, of all concessions for the marketing of remote games, nor the failure to carry out the race scheduled for 2020 and postponed due to the health emergency. Today, with the ruling on the merits, underlines Logico, ” the second section of the TAR reiterates that the expiration measures violate art.1, paragraph 935, of law no.208 / 2015 – concerning the extension to 31 December 2022 of the expiry date of the concessionary relationships existing at the date of its entry in force. And all this in order to guarantee the continuity of tax revenues and the fight against illegal gaming, through the alignment of all and concessions on the same expiration date provided by the legislator “. The Tar, notes the association,” increases the dose, establishing that ‘rather than, as happened, recall the original expiry date of the concessionary relationship, failing to consider that precisely that conventional deadline had been modified by the legislator ‘the administration’ should have expressly implemented its application in accordance with the aforementioned constitutionally oriented interpretation of the provision ‘. All the more so since the extension is not aimed at avoiding the completion of the competitive procedure, but at allowing the concessionaires to participate in the procedure for the assignment of new concessions without interruption, as happened for the group of concessionaires whose title was expiring on 30 June 2016, and on an equal footing ‘. In fact, ‘the non-extension of the concessions that have come to natural expiration, in the absence of a new tender, would actually have caused a distortion of competition since it would entail the reduction of existing state concessionaires on the public gaming market’. “The second section of the Lazio TAR which today expressed itself on some of the appeals in place, puts an end to a dispute that could and should have been avoided – comments Moreno Marasco, president of Logico – because from the beginning we have mentioned the same reasons which today are expressed in an even more exhaustive manner by the administrative judge. We hope that this clarification will put an end to a season in which the choices made appear to be guided by ideological and punitive purposes towards the world of gaming, which is made up of businesses and therefore of people and families who work in full compliance with all regulations “. Now, adds Marasco, “we hope the beginning of a new cycle in which we can finally contribute to the reorganization of the whole system, to the revision of the advertising ban and to the construction of a different relationship between the Administration and private individuals, in which those who respect rules is protected from the illegal rather than damaged market “.