Poland Online Casinos

Poland has been a member of the European Union since May 1^st, 2004, but still, uses the Polish Zloty as currency what means that the country of nearly 40 million inhabitants doesn’t belong to the Eurozone. It’s a big country in central Europe that borders with Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Lithuania. Warsaw is the capital, and the national and official EU language is Polish.

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Poland pretty much lost the existing strong gambling market that had been growing due to the lack of regulation. For a long period land-based and online casinos operated without any regulation, but as a member of the European Union, the country has to follow the European Commission policies, namely in what concerns that operate with a gambling monopoly.

Legislation

In Poland, regulations were considered by the EU too restrictive in what concerns the issuing of gambling licenses. In 1992 several laws were approved, but they were even more restrictive for the opening of new casinos.

2010 brought a new piece of legislation, amended in 2011, totally against online gambling. This Gambling Act declared all online gambling illegal, with the exception of sports betting. When applying for licenses, online sportsbooks operators are able to get theirs for six-year periods. Sports betting operations winnings are subject to 10% taxes, but players winning on foreign sites are not taxed.

Land-based casinos also face tight restrictions. They are restricted to areas with more population and only one casino per district. Limits for the number of gambling tables and machines were also defined. More, as only licensed casinos can have gambling machines, this leads to the removal of machines from many gambling locations.

The legislation also provides severe penalties for those breaking the law, but these are not often enforced, and this is one of the factors for the growth of the industry.

Online Gambling

As mentioned above, the Polish Gaming Act forbids online gambling with the exception of sports betting. There are four licensed sites in Poland for sports betting and the operators that want to get such licenses to need to be the property of Polish citizens, as well as pay very high taxes.

Considering this scenario, it’s easy to understand that local players don’t have many choices to play online, as licensed operators are very few. Surely that player can take the risk to play on foreign unlicensed sites, but at any time these sites can be blacklisted and blocked by the government, and access to the site can be lost.

It’s said that soon enough online gambling will follow the directives of the European Union and Poland will legalize it, and one strong reason for this to happen is the taxes revenues that the government is missing by not legalizing the activity.

Negotiations between the government and local-global operators exist since 2009, but even if talks have been promising, an agreement was not reached yet. Meanwhile, international operators accept polish players, and some even offer their sites in Polish.

Online Casinos for polish players

Here we list some quality sites where anyone in Poland can gamble online safely.

Euro Palace	Video Slots	Guts Casino
Royal Panda	Royal Vegas	Mr Green