Greece has confirmed that it will proceed with plans to revise its online gambling licensing regime to ensure new revenue streams for the cash-strapped government.

On Thursday, Greece’s Deputy Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiadis (pictured) informed parliament that the government intended to proceed with its plans to issue new online gambling licenses, 10 months after first announcing the plans.

Alexiadis said the government had finally had enough of the old licensing regime, under which the previous administration had issued 24 temporary licenses in 2011. These licenses were revoked the following year in what was perceived as a shameless attempt to boost the value of the government’s one-third stake in the OPAP betting monopoly before flogging that stake on the open market.

The botched licensing regime has been the subject of much legal wrangling between spurned operators, the Greek government and the European Commission. Not surprisingly, these 24 operators haven’t felt much responsibility to ante up a share of their Greek market revenue to the government. Alexiadis told parliament that the government’s total take from these operators has been less than €60k over the past three years.