As the EU battles to fund its most ambitious budget yet, online gambling operators have found themselves in the crosshairs alongside Silicon Valley giants. The industry should be paying close attention.
European Union lawmakers have drawn online gambling into one of the most consequential fiscal debates in the bloc's history. As the EU prepares to negotiate a €2 trillion long-term budget for the period 2028 to 2034, members of the European Parliament are proposing a digital levy that would fall on both major technology companies and online gambling operators, framing the sector as a cross-border digital industry that should be contributing at a European level rather than being taxed exclusively by individual member states.
The budget under discussion represents a dramatic step up from the current €1.2 trillion framework covering 2021 to 2027. The increase reflects a combination of higher structural spending needs across the bloc and the obligation to repay around €168 billion borrowed during the pandemic response. Funding that expanded ambition without increasing member state contributions is the central challenge, and it is driving lawmakers toward alternative revenue sources.
Siegfried Mureșan, leading the Parliament's budget negotiations, made the case for targeting large technology firms directly, arguing that companies generating significant profits within the EU's single market should contribute more directly to the budget that underpins that market. The logic applied to Big Tech is being extended to online gambling through a parallel argument: that sectors operating across multiple jurisdictions but taxed only at national levels represent an untapped source of EU-level revenue.
Carla Tavares, speaking for the Socialists and Democrats group, confirmed explicit support for an online gambling tax as part of the new revenue framework. Her comments were not a passing reference. They reflect a growing body of opinion within the Parliament that the gambling sector's digital and cross-border characteristics make it a natural candidate for bloc-level fiscal attention, particularly as earlier discussions within the Parliament have already explored a dedicated gambling levy as part of new EU own resources.
The proposal sits within a broader context of longstanding EU ambitions around digital taxation. Previous attempts to tax large technology companies at a European level have repeatedly foundered on political opposition from member states with lower corporate tax environments and concerns about provoking trade tensions with the United States. The latest effort builds on those earlier foundations but arrives at a moment when budget pressures are substantially higher and the political appetite for alternative revenue sources is correspondingly stronger.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has added a further dimension to the debate, indicating that the EU is prepared to consider levies on US digital companies if trade negotiations with Washington do not progress. While that framing is primarily about Big Tech, it signals a broader institutional openness to taxing digital businesses that creates a more permissive environment for the gambling levy proposal.
The Parliament's budget committee is expected to vote on its position on 15 April, with a full parliamentary vote to follow later in the month. Those steps will establish the Parliament's negotiating stance ahead of discussions with member states, where the real battle will be fought.
That battle will be formidable. EU-wide taxation requires unanimous agreement across all 27 member states, a requirement that has historically been the graveyard of ambitious fiscal proposals. Member states with significant online gambling industries, or those philosophically opposed to new EU-level taxes, will have both the motive and the mechanism to block or dilute any proposal that emerges from the parliamentary process.
The Gambling Sector Has Been Handed a Uniquely Difficult Political Problem
Being grouped with Big Tech in a European budget debate is not where any gambling industry association wants to find itself. The technology sector has spent years and considerable resources resisting EU-level taxation, with limited success in changing the political narrative. Online gambling now faces a version of the same argument, framed around cross-border operations, digital revenues and the perceived gap between where value is generated and where tax is paid. The sector's national licensing and taxation model, which has been its standard operating structure across Europe, is now being explicitly cited as the reason why European-level intervention is justified. That is a framing that will be difficult to dismantle once it takes hold in the parliamentary mainstream.
The Unanimity Requirement Is a Shield, Not a Guarantee
The requirement for unanimous member state approval of any EU-wide tax has blocked similar proposals before and will create significant friction here. But the industry would be unwise to treat that procedural hurdle as a reliable long-term protection. Budget pressures across the EU are not diminishing, and the political incentive to find alternative revenue sources that do not require increasing national contributions will only grow as the 2028 to 2034 framework negotiations intensify. A proposal that fails in one budget cycle has a habit of returning in the next, often in a modified form that has addressed the objections that previously blocked it. The gambling sector's strategic interest is not simply to defeat this proposal but to shape the terms of the debate before the concept becomes more deeply embedded in EU fiscal thinking.
Operators Already Under National Tax Pressure Face a Double Exposure
The EU proposal arrives at a particularly uncomfortable moment for the online gambling industry. Operators in the UK are absorbing the shock of the Remote Gaming Duty hike. The German market is debating whether its tax and regulatory framework is driving players to the black market. The Netherlands has already demonstrated what an aggressive national tax increase can do to licensed market dynamics. Now the prospect of an additional layer of EU-level taxation is being added to a sector that is already under significant fiscal pressure in its largest national markets. The cumulative effect of national tax increases and a potential EU levy would fundamentally alter the economics of operating a licensed European gambling business, and the industry needs to make that argument clearly and credibly in Brussels before the budget committee vote sets the direction of travel.
