An official report prepared for France’s Prime Minister François Fillon suggests that any ‘controlled opening’ of France’s online gambling market must be accompanied by tough restrictions to shore up the new regime. The report recommends the government explore whether bans on payments and advertising for unauthorized sites, originally included in last year’s Delinquency Law, could be squared with EU law under a more open licensing system - from which betting exchanges, spread betting and certain types of online casinos games seem likely to nevertheless be excluded.