New Gambling Legislation in Belgium being Challenged

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The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA), together with the Remote Gambling Association (RGA) have lodged a complaint against new gambling legislation in Belgium.

The EGBA and the RGA, which represents some of Europe's largest remote gambling companies, filed the complaint with the European Commission last week. The essence of the complaint alleges that the legislation is designed to protect domestic operators, at the expense of new entrants, and that this is not in compliance with European Union law.

According to the RGA, the new legislation in Belgium has put in place "unacceptable barriers to new entrants seeking to offer online gambling." The Belgian regulations require applicants for an Internet license to first obtain an offline license and to participate in the land-based market. The RGA stated that this requirement was a "clear barrier to entry" into the Belgian online gaming market "considering that the majority of the European remote gambling operators do not conduct land-based businesses."

In addition, according to the new legislation in Belgium, online operators will need to duplicate their infrastructure by having servers, technical equipment and personnel at a permanent location in the country. Regarding this aspect of the legislation, the RGA included in its complaint that Belgium "completely ignores the obligations and safeguards to which foreign operators are already subject in their member state of establishment." The complaint continued: "In other words the Belgian authorities assert their capacity to judge the integrity of private operators while they deny the ability of other countries to do so."

The Chief Executive Officer of RGA, Clive Hawkswood commented that if the concern of the Belgian laws was consumer protection then objective criteria would need to be used to assess the social responsibility of the operators and that licenses would be granted based on these objective grounds. He continued that "unfortunately, the current system only aims at protecting a handful of existing land-based operators from meaningful competition. Far from benefiting consumers, this will only serve to reduce the value and choice available to them."

Hawkswood continued in his comment that: "There is absolutely no doubt that these measures are driven by protectionism rather than genuine concern for consumers. We hope that the Commission will be consistent with its previous stance on the Belgian laws and will fulfill its duty as guardian of European Union law by taking early action to remedy this abuse."

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