The Italian government has reached an agreement with local and regional authorities on a territorial reorganization of the legal gambling sales network. The great victory for the local authorities in this agreement is a proposal, which has not yet become law, which calls for “more restrictive” municipal regulations and limits. These are concerned both with the required distances which gambling venues must be located from sensitive places and operating hours for legal gambling.
Evidently, as the late critic Giuseppe Prezzolini said, in Italy “nothing is stable, except the provisional”. In Piedmont, this “more restrictive” anti-gambling agreement is technically fully operative, but the government may have tried to dissuade the region to fully implement the law (number 9) passed in 2016 (“Regulations for the prevention and control of the spread of pathological gambling”). The text of this law was presented in 2014, but either the Government did not take note of it or it has simply not been enforced.
However, in the case of the new agreement against gambling in Piedmont, the managers of over 23,000 slot machines which over the years have colonized businesses and spaces across 1,200 municipalities in the region, will now have to abide by it or face fines of up to €6,000.
