Game rooms hourly limits, for the Lombardy Administrative Court "the restrictions on activities are unjustified"
The gaming rules cannot contain hourly limits for Scratch and Win and 10eLotto.
The Administrative Court of Lombardy, with a recent sentence, in partial acceptance of the appeal presented by the Italian Tobacconist Federation for the annulment of the 'Regulations for combating the phenomenon of pathological gambling deriving from forms of lawful gaming' of a Municipality in province of Bergamo, reaffirmed the principle according to which "the reduction of playing times must never go as far as the substantial cancellation of the economic value of the concession". For the Lombard administrative judges, in fact, "even in the presence of a situation of widespread and documented gambling addiction, the limiting interventions must in any case foresee and estimate the decrease in the turnover of dealers, and find a balance that maximizes public interest by minimizing losses for private individuals, which, in turn, are transformed into lower revenues for public finances ". Moreover, the ruling continues," the Regulation sets a correct principle in the abstract, namely that through the closing times they must not be some types of games are damaged to the advantage of others, but it draws an unacceptable consequence in practice, namely that to prevent gambling addiction all types of games must be affected in the same way and at the same time ". Basically, for the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court , any provision of restriction of economic activities through the instrument of the contingent and urgent ordinance must be based, precisely for its and characteristics of an extra-ordinary provision, based on "concrete data indicating a real situation of danger to contain".