Online poker liquidity sharing between European Union regulated gambling markets will be given official regulatory blessing next month.

On Friday, the gaming regulatory bodies in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain issued identical statements indicating that their long-awaited deal to share online poker liquidity among licensed operators in their respective markets will be signed in Rome on July 6.

The signing won’t immediately open the floodgates for poker players in each of those markets to square off against each other across a digital table. The statement indicates that the agreement will only “lay the foundations for cooperation” between the four nations. Regulators in each jurisdiction will then need to individually take the necessary steps “to make liquidity possible for the game of poker.”

These steps will include the thorny question of resolving the disparity in taxation of poker play in each of the jurisdictions, as well as issues involving responsibility for taking regulatory action in the event of some shenanigans involving players or operators in multiple markets.