Professor Takis Tridimas:

Allow me to begin by answering the second question. It is not possible to predict how the Commission might react, but this is an area where the Commission, as the guardian of European Union law, would want to be careful and cautious because it is not really a matter of trade policy. It is a matter of foreign policy. From the perspective of EU law, the peculiarity of this is that the objectives the country is pursuing are not regulatory. It is not the case that goods or services are being prohibited to protect consumers or to prevent, for example, addiction to gambling services offered from a third country online. They would be regulatory objectives and would fall squarely within the common commercial policy. Here, what we have is essentially a foreign policy choice, as I understand it. One would expect the Commission to be very cautious about taking Ireland before the Court of Justice.

If it were to do so for the reasons outlined in our opinion, we believe the Commission would not be successful.

In response to the Senator's question about the Attorney General, I would highlight the following points. I am not convinced that if Ireland were to extend the ban to services it would be liable for damages. That is a remedy which only applies if there is a serious breach of European Union law by a member state. A serious breach is understood in case law as meaning manifest and grave disregard of the discretion that a member state possesses. If we have an EU directive or an EU regulation which requires a member state to do something specific, then there is no discretion. However, in an area like this which is embedded through policy choices, even in the hypothetical event that this was found to be incompatible with EU law, it would certainly not be a manifest and grave disregard of discretionary powers.