Malta Would Pay More Than Italy Under EU’s $2.19B Gambling Levy

Malta’s Licensing Gateway Is What the Levy Actually Taxes

Malta has joined forces with Italy, Portugal, and Spain to challenge a mooted EU levy on online gambling, Politico reported Wednesday, citing four diplomats with knowledge of the discussions. In a statement to the Maltese Parliament on June 22, Prime Minister Robert Abela said his government could not accept EU-level taxes introduced to sustain the bloc’s spending, framing the objection around fiscal sovereignty and referring only obliquely to particular sectors. New EU “own resources” require unanimous approval from all 27 governments, so a single capital can block the effort entirely.

Per Politico’s account, Spain would carry roughly $478 million (€414 million) a year, almost a quarter of the total. Malta would pay about $190 million (€165 million). Italy, at around 7% of proceeds, would pay roughly $154 million (€133 million) – less than Malta, on an economy more than a hundred times larger. Rome’s contribution would also fall well below its usual share of the EU budget, which Politico reports has surprised anti-gambling campaigners. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy passed a resolution last year urging the reversal of the ban on football clubs advertising gambling firms.

The European Commission estimated that a 3% levy on the online gambling sector’s net turnover would raise around $2.19 billion (€1.9 billion) a year across 2028-2034, in a paper circulated to member states and first reported in May as part of a package the Commission said could yield almost $12.7 billion (€11 billion) annually from new taxes on digital services, gambling, and crypto assets. Over the seven-year cycle, that comes to roughly $15.4 billion (€13.3 billion). The same paper conceded there is no common definition of gambling, nor any harmonized approach to taxing it, across the bloc.

Politico traces the mooted tax to Romanian MEP Victor Negrescu, a vice president of the European Parliament, whose original proposal was pitched at 1% of gambling gross revenue. That version, set out in a parliamentary oral question co-signed by lawmakers from the Socialists and Democrats, the European People’s Party, Renew, the Greens, and The Left, cited Parliament research service figures of $2.31 billion to $4.62 billion (€2 billion to €4 billion) a year, or close to $32.3 billion (€28 billion) across the budget period. The 3% Commission scenario applies a different rate to a different base, but the two are the same initiative rather than competing ones.

Malta’s exposure runs through licensing rather than player spending. A Malta Gaming Authority license is what unlocks banking relationships and a foothold in the EU market, which is why Malta-based firms dominated the German and Austrian online markets before national regulators moved against them. The MGA’s 2024 annual report put gaming at 6.7% of the national economy directly, rising to 10.1% once indirect spillover is counted – below the roughly 12% Politico cites, which matches the figure in the authority’s 2022 report. That same MGA framework is the regulatory foundation for crypto-native gambling platforms, meaning a turnover levy on Malta-licensed operators would reach the crypto-casino sector directly.

The license is already under pressure: on April 16, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Case C-440/23 that member states may prohibit online gambling services authorized elsewhere in the bloc and attach civil consequences, including restitution of player losses. A week later, Advocate General Nicholas Emiliou found Malta’s Bill 55, the statute instructing Maltese courts to refuse foreign judgments against locally licensed operators, incompatible with EU rules on recognizing judgments. Malta is now defending the same licensing model against a tax and a court at once.

The industry’s case against the levy is that it would push players toward unlicensed sites. Maarten Haijer, secretary general of the European Gaming and Betting Association, told Politico that higher taxes mean worse odds for customers, with illegal markets in Europe “one click away.” Nicola Matteucci, an economist at the Università Politecnica delle Marche who researches the sector, told the same outlet there is a price point at which demand falls but that the effect is slower than operators suggest, because most gamblers are not fully rational consumers. Former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who lost more than $1.35 million (£1 million) on horse racing across 45 years and now runs a gambling addiction charity, told Politico in Brussels in June that the industry’s arguments were “window dressing.”

Politico also reports that Roberta Metsola, the Maltese president of the European Parliament, gave the opening address last year at a Rome conference run by SiGMA, the Maltese gambling events company founded by her university friend Eman Pulis, telling the audience she was “more than a little proud” the event had started in the island state. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also spoke. One EU diplomat, granted anonymity by Politico, described Malta as “as dependent on the online gambling industry as Germany is on cars.”

At the time of writing, the Commission has not issued a formal proposal, and the levy faces a compressed calendar. Abela told parliament that budget talks resume at the October European Council, followed by a special Council in November and a push to close in December, drawing on the five-day negotiation that settled the 2020 framework. Ireland, whose presidency program names a timely MFF agreement an overarching priority, chairs those talks until December 31. For scale, Malta’s modeled bill would equal roughly 12% of the $1.6 billion (€1.39 billion) in direct gross value added the MGA attributed to gaming in 2024.