The oldest guild was established under the Chamber of Commerce of the Czech Republic as early as 1993. There was not much noise about the lottery industry during the past few years. This could be changed. The chamber changed its leadership and Stanislav Brunclik, an ex-journalist, was appointed as chief executive.
“This is one of the examples, in which we are presented with a particular media-twisted point of view, but the facts are often “surprisingly” different”. A great number of politicians use it to their advantage and I am afraid that it is not exclusively just to their political advantage. Should we speculate on the matter, we may arrive at a conclusion, that this whole “spiel” around gambling is taking far too long to lead us to think, that that what is at stake here is only a regulation of few casinos and gaming venues, says the freshly appointed President of the CCLI Stanislav Brunclik.
The intention of the new leadership of the CCLI according to its statements is not interested in proving wrong the carefully designed architecture of regulation of the industry, which needs it as much as many other activities. What it absolutely opposes though is the zero-tolerance issue and a permanently insecure entrepreneurial environment.
“We are taking in account, that demand exists and it does not include solely people on social benefit support. That is absurd. It is to be mentioned, that supply exists as well - the internet, establishments housing half legal clubs etc. This is the only outcome and tangible success of the so called zero tolerance. As we know, supply shall not disappear on its own, whilst in many cases we aim to liquidate without any rules legal and legitimate part of the business spectrum, including establishments which comply with very strict criteria of quality. This can not be principally correct and one should be at least cautious, if not suspicious adds Mr. Brunclík.
CCLI has according to its proclamations a tool to help responsible politicians with the regulation of hazard. In cooperation with the Prague Chamber of Commerce the CCLI is set on developing a program of stock-taking of hazard, which monitors the actual status quo of establishments offering gaming services in a particular geographical area and shall evaluate these establishments according to quality.
“It is basically a manual. The politician is given ready-made material including photo-documentation. By these means he/she is presented with a detailed information about the true situation in "his/her territory’s" concerning currently operated establishments. Until now it is common practice, that a number of politicians tend to vote about something that influences the destiny of others, but more or less have little idea what they are voting for. This is not harsh criticism, but simply a reality and it is not restricted solely to the field of the gaming industry. A politician is not a “Superhuman”. But… if we want to change something, it is to be done on basis of transparent rules and detailed information. "This should be a norm”, thinks the new President of the CCLI. If we want a perfectly chaotic example of bad politics, the case of Prague may be a good one. The resulting coalition zero tolerance ordinance was adapted with factual errors and in some cases against the will of city municipalities. In the media, this was presented as the extermination of gaming places with the aim to maintain only casinos. According to Mr. Brunclík, this is far from reality, thus in some cases top quality casinos got the boot, but establishments of questionable quality were allowed to stay in business.
“After the implementation a rapid surge of illegal and non-regulated gaming dens was noticed. The result of which is, that problematic players were not rid of anything. On the contrary they are being offered a much more dangerous and uncontrollable environment in private gaming dens. On the other hand we can see some astonishing performances by politicians, if we decide to check the list of permitted establishments addresses in the ordinance, where quality of the venue was not questioned. And this whole thing we proudly call a successful battle against hazard? Well, I would call it something else, closes Stanislav Brunclík.