Lawyer Stefano Sbordoni, general secretary of the Italian Sportsmen Union Totoricevitori, in the interview given to Agimeg says he is "shocked and dismayed by the vehemence and fury with which the minorities of the Piedmont Regional Council pose themselves on the issue of maintaining the current form of the law regional on the game".
Piedmont Regional Council blocked by the obstruction of the oppositions (5-star Movement, Democratic Party, Leu), which in recent days have presented 50,000 amendments against the reform project of the Regional Law n. 9/2016 for the prevention and contrast to the spread of pathological gambling presented by the current council majority (Lega, Forza Italia, Fratelli d'Italia). In essence, with this reform they would like to halve the distances between "sensitive" places and slot rooms, bringing them from 500 to 250 meters and reduce the list of places at risk by deleting, for example, parishes, oratories, branches ATMs and credit institutions. The new proposal also eliminates the time limitations for the machines by the Municipalities. The majority in the Regional Council, starting with the President of the Region Alberto Cirio, considers the 2016 law "too restrictive and penalizing from an economic and employment point of view". The councilor for the budget Andrea Tronzano, moreover, in recent months has repeatedly stressed "the need to protect jobs in the sector" which are seriously at risk from the continuous closures due to the Covid19 emergency. According to the opposition, however, the law is fine as it is, as, according to the data that emerged from the studies of the Health Department of the Region, Ires Piemonte and the National Research Council presented on Thursday 28 January in the joint session of the Economics-Commerce and Health e Legality, in Piedmont in 2019, compared to 2016, the volume of physical gambling (slot machines and video lottery) would have decreased by 572 million euros (-11%), while in the rest of Italy the reduction, in 2019, it would amount to 18 million euros (-0.03%). Lawyer Stefano Sbordoni, in the yesterday interview to Agimeg, highlighted that the obstructive behavior of the Piedmontese council opposition is more a "question of political survival that leads to loud shouting to maintain visibility" rather than an objective evaluation of this reform proposal, which, while respecting the principles on preventing and combating the spread of pathological gambling to protect the weakest and most vulnerable sections of the population, is based on greater economic protection for the many operators in the sector and the many places of work that the Covid19 emergency is putting in grave danger. According to lawyer Sbordoni, this behavior of the oppositions within the Regional Council of Piedmont "is the typical example of what we do not need: local interests totally independent from the real needs of the place and the country. leads us to think that it is the only law left from the previous legislature and therefore they are linked to it. Finally, I think it's fortunate that they are no longer the ones who administer the region seeing the way in which they are dealing with the issue of the law that regulates the game".
