Online casinos may be coming to Poland.  According to the Warsaw Business Journal the Polish government is prepared to take a more pragmatic stance on the regulation of online casinos and gambling.

Deputy Finance Minister Jacek Kapica is determined to legalize online casinos in Poland by no later than 2008.  This is a drastic change in the position taken by the previous government.  The highly conservative Law and Justice PiS government ruled against all forms of online gambling after analysts from the Ministry of Finance argued that the cost to the country could not be justified.

It was claimed that any revenues anticipated from online casinos would surely be lower than estimated while government dollars spent regulating the business would certainly be higher than expected.  On the other side of the argument, Merrill Lynch estimates that revenues from online gambling could peak as high as US$48 billion by 2010.  There is a lot of money to be made in online casinos.

Acknowledging the potential profit from online casinos, Minister Kapica reasoned, “We cannot control this process anyway and it is better that the Budget at least derives some revenue from it.”

Portions of the Polish press are convinced that the change in tune from the government came as a result of pressure from the European Court of Justice.  Recently the court ruled that Italy had no right to use criminal law to ban online casino companies established in fellow EU countries from drawing players from Italy.