After the public hearing in Parliament, the Association of Games of Chance Operators (ASOM) is demanding that the draft gambling law be withdrawn and rewritten from scratch. According to them, it opens serious constitutional and economic questions that cannot be solved with minor amendments.

ASOM president Vasko Ilijevski argues that behind the protective rhetoric hides an attempt at a state monopoly over online betting. "How can the state be both referee and competitor in the same game?" he asks. Expert Zoran Puhač called the proposed tax model "economically unsustainable," warning that it would directly wreck the legal market - taxing even non-existent profit when real revenues are below 1,000 euros, in other words taxing a loss.

The hardest argument is the human one. The "I Want to Work" association warns that the law could cost around 10,000 jobs and trigger a new wave of emigration. And the National Council of Disability Organisations reminds us that thousands of people with disabilities, who receive support through industry-funded programmes, would be left without access to day centres, orthopaedic aids and sports programmes.

Games of chance are easily declared a social evil - and for some of them that's true. But when a law is rushed through, without real debate with those who pay taxes and employ thousands, then the question is no longer about gambling. The question is whether the state wants to regulate the market - or wants to take it over itself. And those are two very different things, hidden behind the same protective rhetoric.