France: A new gaming commission will start in June

At first sight, two significant changes can be noted: first of all, the new commission is instituted for five years. In 2014, the State will then have to decide if it will renew this commission as it is, or if it will bring any modifications.

Also, the Commission counts fewer members now, since these went from 20 to 12. There is only one State advisor, one senior adviser to the State Audit Office, one finance inspector and one inspector general to the Home Office. These positions were doubled in the CSJ. The Home Office also counts two representatives (before these were the general manager for the local authorities and the director of the Regulations and Legal Department or their representatives), while both the Ministry of Finance and Health have one representative each.

The representative of the Ministry of Tourism as well as the Secretary General for the overseas territories thus no longer exist. Apart from a senator and a deputy, two mayors have been nominated by the National Association of Mayors of Resorts and Tourist Communes (Association nationale des maires des stations classées et des communes touristiques). On the other hand, the chairman of this Association is no longer a member of the Commission.

The State Adviser is the chairman of the new commission. His mandate, which is also new, will last five years. At the end of this period, we don’t know yet if it will be renewed or not. Finally, the new commission will continue to give an advisory opinion.

For many years, the Commission supérieure des jeux has been the subject of criticism from communes and casinos due to the fact that its decisions were sometimes incomprehensible. Some of them had even been disputed with success before the Court, such as the Gujan Mestras case.

The Home Secretary has been used to rely on the CSJ’s advisory opinion but since two years, Michèle Alliot-Marie did not hesitate to take contrary decisions by granting 50 slot machines in December 2007. These slot machines had been refused earlier to the operator.

This month, according to her colleague Alain Joyandet, she forced the CSJ to take a positive decision to set up the casino of Salins-les-Bains (Jura) in its new premises, while the application had been postponed regularly since 30 September. A group of operators also told the minister they were surprised to see that it took eleven and a half months to process the application they submitted to extend their number of slot machines.