EU Weighs a 1% Bloc-Wide Gambling Levy as Brussels Eyes the Sector for Budget Cash

The European Commission is now preparing a formal assessment of a proposed bloc-wide tax on online gambling, the clearest sign yet that an idea floated in the European Parliament in February has moved into the machinery of EU budget negotiations. Piotr Serafin, European Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, confirmed in Brussels that the Commission will produce an objective assessment of the revenue options available to the Parliament, the online gambling levy among them, and present it in due course.

A European Parliament official told SBC News that the proposed uniform 1% tax on gambling across the EU had "gained momentum" in the broader debate over the bloc's next long-term budget. The levy was put forward in February by European Parliament Vice President Victor Negrescu, a Romanian MEP from the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group, and has since picked up the backing of 40 MEPs across member states. It sits inside talks on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028 to 2034, the multi-year budget the Council of the European Union, currently under Cypriot Presidency, is building to fund the bloc through the next decade. For operators already managing divergent regimes from Estonia to higher-tax western markets, a 28th tax layer applied from Brussels would be a structural change rather than a rate tweak.

The numbers under discussion are not small. Negrescu's office projects a 1% levy on gross gambling revenue raising 2 billion to 4 billion euros (about $2.1bn to $4.3bn) a year, or roughly 14 billion to 28 billion euros ($15bn to $30bn) across the full 2028 to 2034 cycle. The S&D group, which adopted the Parliament's interim MFF report by absolute majority in April 2026, wants the proceeds steered toward education, youth policy, mental health and addiction prevention. The stated timeline is an official agreement by the end of 2026, adoption of legislative acts in 2027, and the first fresh EU funds flowing from January 2028.

The numbers and the legal wall

The proposal lands on a market large enough to make 1% meaningful. Europe's total gross gambling revenue reached 123.4 billion euros ($133.5bn) in 2024, up 5% year over year, with the online segment at 47.9 billion euros ($51.8bn), or 39% of the total, according to EGBA and H2 Gambling Capital. A 1% online levy against that base is the math behind the multi-billion projection, though the proposal's backers fold in expected market growth and recovered revenue from illegal sites to reach the upper end.

The legal obstacle is the harder problem. Gambling taxation has always been a national competence, with each of the 27 states setting its own rate, and the Commission has said so directly: "Gambling taxation is first and foremost a matter of national competence of Member States." Those national rates run from around 5% in lighter-touch jurisdictions to nearly 40% in the heaviest. A directly imposed EU tax would need to rest on Article 113 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and Article 113 requires unanimity across all 27 governments. "Unanimity would be needed," Terence Cassar of GTG Legal told igamingbusiness, calling the proposal "not legally feasible" as drafted. Negrescu's team has tried to route around that by framing the levy as an EU "own resource" under the MFF rather than a harmonising tax, and the Parliament spokesperson stressed the plan "is not intended to affect national licensing systems or replace national tax revenues."

Why the trade should watch this

Member states are already split. Progress was discussed at the latest Council meeting in Brussels among the "Friends of Cohesion," a bloc of 16 countries that includes Malta. Malta is treading carefully, and for obvious reasons: gambling accounts for roughly one-tenth of its GDP, and the island is already fighting the EU over its international licensing protections. Maltese Prime Minister Robert Abela held the line that fiscal sovereignty "should be kept within the competence of the Member States," and that the budget "must reflect realistic and nationally-based reforms." The proposal's pitch leans heavily on the black market: the Parliament spokesperson cited European Casino Association and YieldSec data showing illegal operators generated around 80.6 billion euros ($87.2bn) in 2024, 71% of Europe's online gambling activity, against 33.6 billion euros from the licensed channel. A future levy, the source said, would also fund payment blocking, cross-border coordination and clearer EU positioning on prediction markets.

The licensed industry's largest trade body is firmly against it. EGBA Secretary General Maarten Haijer called the levy "fundamentally unworkable," arguing there is "no legal basis or mechanism to collect such a levy" because gambling is not harmonised at EU level, and warning that stacking an EU charge on top of national taxes would push players toward unlicensed sites and cut member-state revenue. That is the affiliate-facing risk in plain terms. Compliance costs and tax already steer operator behavior across the bloc, the same pressure visible in markets like Austria's liberalisation debate and France's tougher line under regulator Pascal Chevremont. A second layer of cost lands on margins that affiliates depend on, and any squeeze on licensed channels widens the gap to the offshore sites that pay no commissions and run no compliance. That dynamic already plays out where regulators tighten supply, as in France under a tougher ANJ leadership.

History gives the skeptics a precedent with a clear outcome. The Commission tried to bring order to the sector once before, adopting a "comprehensive European framework on online gambling" action plan in 2012. It ended without harmonisation. On 7 December 2017 the Commission closed all of its open infringement procedures and complaints in the gambling field, citing a more strategic approach to enforcement and affirming that member states retain a wide discretionary margin over their own gambling policy. The action plan produced recommendations, not binding law, and the question of EU competence over gambling was effectively left to national governments. A final decision on the current levy is not expected before 2027, and it still needs the political will of enough member states to clear the unanimity bar that sank tax coordination before.