The Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations, CEOE, has met with representatives of the gaming business sector who wanted to move their situation, as associate members, in view of the growing importance and concern that this activity raises in public opinion, in particular the private face-to-face game .
Being a debate full of social, political and economic contributions, the sector has transmitted to CEOE, as the highest representative entity of the Spanish business sector, that the activity of the game is legitimately contemplated in our system and, like any other activity, needs to defend their interests before opinions and initiatives that undermine their normal development.
In Spain the game is a regulated sector since 1977, with the birth of our democracy. The private face-to-face game (which includes casinos, bingo halls, gambling halls, bookmakers, hotel and catering machines …), in particular, is governed by the multiple regulations that the Autonomous Communities have developed in each territory. It is, therefore, a widely regulated sector in which employers scrupulously comply with the regulations that affect them.
Requests for private gambling venues to be subject to planning, ensuring that there are minimum distances between different rooms and with respect to schools, are increasingly frequent. On this issue, the gaming sector recalls that 14 of the 17 Autonomous Communities already contemplate measures that establish plans of this type.
In this regard, the sector considers positive that there are regulations that include planning measures, since they believe that with them a controlled and sustainable development of the game activity can be achieved. It also defends that these types of measures are proportional, do not violate legal certainty and, in addition, do not promote regulatory dispersion, nor impair market unity, all of which are common to any other economic activity.
According to the representatives of the gaming business sector, in Spanish society, and in most European countries, this is a standardized activity that is exercised in the field of freedom and responsibility of each individual. Such is the roots of the game, that the Spanish Public Sector itself – highlights the private sector – participates through an offer that covers an important part of the market share. The essence of the game, as such, is independent of whether the operator with which it participates is public or private, the representatives of the sector add. In this sense, they insist, the legal treatment and the considerations that are directed by the public authorities towards the entrepreneurs of the private face-to-face game should not vary with respect to those made towards the public game.
Companies in the private face-to-face game sector have made an important effort to implement access measures that prevent the entry of those who are minors or appear in the prohibited registers. If it is considered necessary to reinforce the controls prior to entering private game rooms, the Administration may count on the full collaboration of the business sector to develop measures in areas such as education, additions, responsible gambling, etc., which lead to in a strict, justified and proportional regulation, in terms of publicity and control.
Ultimately, private companies whose purpose is the face-to-face game that CEOE represents show that they carry out their activity in full compliance with the regulations that apply to them and even go further through the adoption of self-regulation and ethical codes to Your sector
CEOE echoes these objectives and corroborates the sector that has fully offered to collaborate with the Public Administrations to address all those issues that may concern society the most. In addition, it coincides that the normative treatment that the private face-to-face game receives is based on factual considerations and proceeds from the sufficiently reasoned decisions that, respecting the Spanish regulatory framework and the legal certainty that it entails, also count on the considerations of the representatives of the sector, such as reactivating and strengthening the dialogue, within the framework of the Sectorial Conference of the game.
