There are 440 remote gaming licenses in Malta, and applications in 2011 amounted to over 100, the Minister of Finance, the Economy and Investment said when opening the 4th annual edition of the Malta iGaming Seminar organized by the Maltese Remote Gaming Industry on Tuesday, 11September 2012.
Malta is considered, the Minister said, to be “one of the most technically competent jurisdictions to listen to and consult with” in the remote gaming sector. In fact, the Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) has hosted both European and North American regulators which wanted to learn from the LGA’s regulatory experiences and to obtain a more technical understanding on how and what to regulate.
Malta has taken a strong position to ensure that the Community law principle of freedom of establishment is applied so as to allow Maltese-registered and licensed online gaming companies to obtain licences in other jurisdictions such as France, Italy, Denmark and Spain.
Incidentally, almost 60% of Danish and 40% of French licensees are Malta-registered companies. A similar situation exists in Italy and Spain.
In concluding, the Minister remarked that Malta’s objective is “to continue improving the quality of our jurisdiction”. By way of example, reference was made to the recent phasing out of the provisional license model (thus allowing operators to produce more long term certainty to their service providers, such as payment gateways and financial institutions) and the drastic reduction of processing time of new applications to an average of 15 weeks.
