Brussels has shared early estimates suggesting new EU-level taxes on online gambling, big tech and crypto could raise close to €11 billion a year for the 2028 to 2034 budget. A 3% levy on gambling net turnover could yield around €1.9 billion annually, though the figures are analytical options, not law, and any bloc-wide tax needs unanimous Member State approval.
The European Commission has set out analytical estimates indicating that new EU-level taxes on online gambling, major technology platforms and crypto-assets could together raise nearly €11 billion a year for the 2028 to 2034 budget. According to a document shared with Member States and reported by Euronews in May 2026, the figures are described by the Commission as early estimates that may underestimate actual revenue, rather than formal legislative proposals. The work sits within negotiations over the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU's seven-year budget, and the parallel search for new "own resources" that reduce reliance on national contributions and help repay debt from the Next Generation EU recovery programme.
For the online gambling sector, the Commission estimated that a 3% levy on the sector's net turnover could generate around €1.9 billion per year on average across the 2028 to 2034 period. The Commission has acknowledged that there is no common EU definition of gambling and no harmonised approach to its taxation, with licensing and tax rates set at Member State level. Reflecting that fragmentation, the analysis reportedly sets out several possible designs, including a contribution based on operators' margins, a tax on gambling revenues, or a charge linked proportionally to player participation. It is worth noting that the Commission's formal July 2025 Own Resources Decision did not itself contain a harmonised gambling tax, and that the €1.9 billion estimate stems from this later analytical exercise rather than a tabled law.
The digital and crypto strands are larger in scale. The Commission calculated that a 3% tax on certain revenues of large digital companies, covering online advertising, intermediation services and the commercial use of user data, could raise around €5 billion a year, using 2024 data from Spain, France and Italy and applying thresholds including a €750 million global group turnover test. On crypto-assets, the Commission examined a 0.1% tax on the value of transactions, estimated at €3 billion to €4 billion annually, or a tax on capital gains estimated at a more conservative €1 billion to €2.4 billion per year, while cautioning that crypto revenue is difficult to calculate because of limited data. The European Parliament, in an interim MFF report adopted in spring 2026, has separately backed exploring digital, gambling and crypto levies as own resources, and the Socialists and Democrats group has pushed its own gambling contribution concept earmarked for education and youth.
The path from analysis to legislation remains long. Any EU-wide tax requires unanimous approval from all Member States, and Malta is already reported to oppose the gambling levy, while the digital services strand revives a politically contested debate given the predominance of large American platforms among the firms targeted. The next financial framework is expected to be agreed in political terms by the end of 2026, a deadline that creates both urgency and constraint. These are proposals and estimates under discussion, not adopted measures, and the figures should be read as the Commission's working numbers rather than settled policy.
For licensed operators, the significance of a 3% EU levy lies less in its headline rate than in where it would sit. It would arrive on top of national gambling taxes that already run far higher across most major European markets, from the United Kingdom's increased Remote Gaming Duty to the various levies applied in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The fiscal pressure on the licensed channel is the live question for the markets the proposal would touch, because each incremental layer narrows the gap operators can sustain against unlicensed alternatives. Channelisation, the share of play that stays within the licensed system, should be a central test in any final EU design rather than an afterthought.
The requirement for unanimous Member State approval has historically been the most effective brake on ambitious EU tax proposals, and the reported Maltese opposition illustrates how a single jurisdiction with a concentrated gambling industry can hold up a measure it considers damaging. That shield should not be mistaken for permanence, however. The fiscal pressure driving the hunt for own resources is persistent, Next Generation EU repayments are rising, and proposals that fail in one budget cycle tend to return in modified form in the next. Operators and trade bodies listed across the wider directory of the sector would be better served engaging with the substance now than relying on procedure to hold indefinitely.
The three strands are framed as separate measures, yet the sectors they target increasingly intersect. Crypto-funded gambling deposits, digital advertising on betting and prediction platforms, and crypto-asset transactions routed through gambling operators all sit at the seams between the gambling, digital and crypto definitions the Commission is still trying to pin down. Without consistent treatment across those overlaps, the EU risks double taxation of the same activity or three parallel and conflicting frameworks rather than a coherent architecture, and readers can track terminology in the glossary as definitions firm up. The bottom line is that these remain analytical estimates rather than law, and the 3% gambling figure should be treated as a working number, not a settled rate. The harder questions of definition, cross-pillar coordination and unanimity will shape what, if anything, ultimately emerges.
