Possible Online Gambling Ban for Finland

Over the past few months several other countries have followed in the footsteps of the United States and placed some sort of ban or restrictions on online gambling. First there was Norway, then Turkey and Germany and now it seems that Finland is leaning toward an online gambling ban.

The Helsingin Sanomat recently reported that they had received information that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health are planning on creating an amendment to a law already in place on gambling. The new amendment would allow online gamblers to claim back their losses. In other words if a player loses money from a site they would be able to get what they lost back. The online operator, player winning the game or a credit card company would be the person responsible for paying back the loss.

The Ministry believes that with the passing of this amendment the foreign companies that are running the Internet gambling sites would not want a Finnish player playing games on their site. They would be too big of a risk according to the law. A major rule of poker and other online gambling is that the player must pay if they lose.

Several complaints have been filed to the European Union by online gambling firms against Germany, who banned Internet gambling January 1st. Other countries who have broken European Union policy are Denmark, France and Sweden. If more countries continue to ban online gambling or add amendments and rules to online gambling, players may soon find it harder and harder to participate in online gambling.