(Jammma) The amendment to the Rome-saving decree approved this morning by the Senate “tackles issues of absolute importance regarding legality in the public gaming sector and, in particular, the amusement and entertainment machine sector. It should be remembered that this provision also deals with the protection of good faith and the weakest categories with regard to aspects linked to public order". The Undersecretary for the Economy said so while speaking in the Chamber Alberto Giorgetti, adding that “The second aspect tackled by the approved amendment concerns a theme that should be dear to Parliament: the tax revenue deriving from this activity, which flows into the state budget to be allocated to general public services. The activity of public gaming, pursuant to article 110, paragraph 6 letters a) e b) of the consolidated text of public safety laws, can be exercised legally only if the devices are connected to a telematic network managed by selected State concessionaires - I remind all senators - through public procedures and submitted, both at the time of granting the concession and during the activity, stringent controls of public order and of an economic-financial nature. The concession regime allows an activity that would otherwise be carried out by criminal organizations to be channeled into a legal network, without adequate controls and in a completely underground way, thus subtracting the entire sector and the related financial resources from the State. Given the delicacy of these issues, it is necessary, to complete the sectoral regulation on public gaming, something that did not exist up to now, to provide for adequate discipline aimed at regulating the crisis of the concession relationship in the event of revocation or forfeiture of the concessionaire or exclusion from the selection procedure or failure to award companies already concessionaires. I would like to remind all the senators that to date there was no legislation that would regulate this type of situation; issue that is addressed by amendment 1.150″. Giorgetti added that "in all these hypotheses, in fact, the lack of specific legislative provisions, aimed at regulating the transfer of activities (not the maintenance of activities) carried out by the outgoing concessionaire as a result of the crisis, can cause a series of negative consequences, such as the transfer of all or part of the activities carried out by the concessionaire from the legal world to the illegal one managed by organized crime; can lead to situations of unfair competitive advantage for some of the concessionaires present on the market to the detriment of the others, in violation of the principle of equal treatment, as well as the risk of a prolonged suspension of the activity which would cause huge revenue losses and consequent repercussions on the levels employment. To date, the overall structure of these subjects is not regulated in any way so that, in fact, in the hypothesis of a crisis of the concessionaire, these categories of entrepreneurs are devoid of any safeguard measure. The approved provisions aim at: regulating crisis situations that could arise, with the intention of safeguarding the existence of the legal network and therefore of the revenues connected to the treasury, the protection of public order, good faith and the safeguarding of the weak; insure the level playing field among all the concessionaires, thus avoiding forms of abuse of dominant positions on the market; preserve the tax revenue to protect public expenditure and therefore the general services also financed by these resources. To these ends, the law provides for a period of time, fixed at ninety days, during which the concessionaire affected by definitive revocation or forfeiture measures continues to operate to allow the takeover of the other concessionaires, according to principles inspired by the level playing field. In this way, the integrity of the legal network is preserved and the activities carried out by the outgoing concessionaire, distributed among the other concessionaires present on the market, prevent this from determining and creating dominant positions”. Furthermore, continued the undersecretary, "the approved rule, clearly establishing that the mechanism envisaged for the transfer of assets from the concessionaire affected by a revocation or forfeiture measure to other subjects is activated in the event of an appeal against the measure only following the judgment in favor of the administration, it protects the State from any huge requests for compensation that would arise if the activity were blocked before the final sentence. In such cases, in fact, insult could be added to the damage, as the State could be sentenced to pay compensation for the damages suffered by the concessionaire whose activity had been suspended. Obviously, in detail, the provision in question also provides for a different mechanism for the 6B devices, relating to the VLTs and the 6A devices, relating to the AWPs. VLTs are gaming systems made up of a series of video terminals, with remote control of the game and are installed exclusively in dedicated rooms. The law provides that the installation of each video terminal is subject to authorization upon payment of a large sum. The regulation in question therefore establishes that the rights held by the outgoing concessionaire, which give rise to the possibility of installing these devices, are attributed, subject to an option to be freely exercised, to the other concessionaires, in proportion to the number of devices managed, thus ensuring there level playing field. As far as AWPs are concerned, considering that the managers are the owners of the devices, the law establishes the legal termination, within the same period of ninety days, of the contracts between the outgoing licensee and the managers. The provision, therefore, is aimed exclusively at regulating the crisis of the concession relationship in the event of revocation or forfeiture of the concessionaire, to protect the legal network and the connected tax revenue, as well as the level playing field linked to the market; in this way, it is evidently prevented that the activities carried out by the concessionaire move into the illegal sector. As regards the other aspect expressly mentioned, in relation to local authorities, provisions inspired by the principle of autonomy and self-responsibility between the levels of government are introduced, within the framework of the existing reciprocal relations of the constitutional framework of Title V. Regional and regional levels of government local authorities, within the scope of their prerogatives - which are based on article 117 - may, within the scope of their competence, issue legislative and regulatory provisions capable, moreover, of affecting the general regulatory framework, in the field of public games, prepared with legislation state and on the basis of which, over the years, it has been possible, through state concessions, to build the complex gaming collection network over the entire territory. Said interventions, if not coordinated with those already adopted at the state level, are evidently likely to undermine the general regulatory framework and the complex of state concession relationships which are based on the latter. These possible aspects, however, are likely to jeopardize the overall performance of gaming collections and the related tax revenue forecasts, as they currently fall within the relative trends. Furthermore, the dystonic choices taken at regional and local level, from the point of view of the concessionaires, linked to the State by contracts can constitute a violation of the fundamental principle underlying the law of contracts, which can be summarized in the well-known expression pacta sunt servanda. This violation may be prodromal to actions for damages which it is not possible to exclude that the concessionaires concerned apply directly to the State. Given all this, the provisions introduce the general principle whereby, if negative financial effects are determined to the detriment of the State, also as a result of feared compensation actions, due to regulatory initiatives by sub-state government levels, the national Government adopts, in order to neutralize such negative effects, appropriate measures to correspondingly reduce state transfers to the aforementioned levels of sub-state government. In essence, from the point of view of the technical-financial assessment of the scope of the new provisions, it is possible to conclude in the sense that the same have a positive effect on keeping the revenue forecasts intact - also contained in the trends - and on the contrary, on avoiding negative financials. Therefore, in the light of a series of considerations that do not fall within the merits, but which refer exclusively to an opinion that emerged in the debate that does not take into account the objective data and regulatory reference, we believe that the approved amendment 1.150 goes in the sense of protection of revenue continuity, defense of the public interest, defense of vulnerable subjects and the definitive closure of a group of regulations in the legal gaming sector which would otherwise cause conditions for the growth of illegal gaming. Moreover, overall it is a virtuous rule for the state coffers ".
