The Council of State, with a ruling dated 19 February, rejected an entrepreneur's appeal against the TAR's ruling regarding hourly limitations on the operation of slot machines.
With a provision dated 15 October 2014, the Municipality of Milan established that the activity of collecting bets using the devices referred to in art. 110, paragraph 6, RD 18 June 1931, n. 773 (TULPS) was permitted exclusively from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 18:00 to 23:00 every day, including holidays.
With an appeal before the Regional Administrative Court for Lombardy, the owner of a public gaming hall located in Milan challenged the aforementioned provision, deducing:
– the non-attribution of the established hourly limitations to the power referred to in the art. 50, paragraph 7, legislative decree 18 August 2000, n. 267 (TUEL);
– the lack of investigation and justification of the contested provision;
– violation of the principle of proportionality of administrative action.
With sentence no. 550 of 13 March 2019, the Regional Administrative Court for Lombardy, after noting the inadmissibility of the proposed appeal due to lack of interest, rejected the proposed appeal.
The entrepreneur turned to the Council of State.
For the CDS "on the subject of measures limiting the opening hours of gaming halls, aimed at combating and preventing gambling addiction, administrative jurisprudence has consistently affirmed the necessity of an adequate investigation based on a concrete analysis of the spread of the gambling addiction phenomenon in the territorial area of reference.
In the case in question, the adequacy of the investigation conducted by the Municipality of Milan in issuing the contested provision emerges from the motivation thereof where express reference is made to the SerT data [«Given that, in the SerT (Drug Addiction Services) of the Addiction Department of the ASL of Milan, people affected by gambling pathologies are almost three hundred, with a 40% increase in each of the last three years, estimated at 2.500 1e people who need care"], included in the report of the Lombardy Region, General Directorate of Family, Social Solidarity and Volunteering on «Pathological gambling. Analysis of the activities carried out by the SER.T during 2013", which shows a notable increase in the number of patients treated for gambling addiction between the years 2010 and 2013, in the specific area of Milan.
Furthermore, the TAR itself had already ruled on the adequacy of the investigation conducted by the Milanese administration in its ruling of 8 July 2015, no. 1568, examining a similar complaint to the same provision which is the subject of the judgment (sentence which became final following the decree of the President of this Section, 11 November 2021, n. 2011, which declared the appeal for peremption extinguished).
