RGA & EGBA make a complaint against the Belgian gambling laws

A number of elements of the Belgian legislation are designed to protect the domestic Belgian gambling market from legitimate competition by putting in place unacceptable barriers to new entrants seeking to offer online gambling.

The new law requires in particular applicants for an online licence to first obtain an offline one and actively participate in the offline market: this is a clear barrier to entry considering that the majority of the European remote gambling operators do not conduct land-based business.

The law also requires online operators to duplicate all of their infrastructure by locating their servers, technical equipment, and the relevant personnel in a permanent establishment in Belgium. In doing so, Belgium completely ignores the obligations and safeguards to which foreign operators are already subject in their Member State of establishment. 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 Belgian government justified these measures, which are discriminatory as they are in practice much easier to fulfil for local operators than for operators originating in other EU jurisdictions, on consumer protection grounds. They also argued that after the Santa Casa ECJ ruling, which concerned the State-controlled Portuguese gambling monopoly, Member States have a free hand to decide on gambling policies.

During the notification procedure that preceded the adoption of the laws, however, the Commission contested those arguments and the compliance of the Belgian draft legislation with the EU rules. At a later stage, Commissioner Barnier also publicly stated in the European Parliament that the Santa Casa ruling only concerned the specific situation in Portugal. Unfortunately, the Belgian Government chose not to respect the Commission’s views and passed the law without change.

The complaint lodged today provides the Commission with solid legal arguments to challenge the Belgian legislation through an infringement procedure.

Clive Hawkswood, Chief Executive of the RGA, said: “If consumer protection was the real concern, licences would be granted on the basis of objective criteria assessing the social responsibility of operators. Unfortunately, the current system only aims at protecting a handful of existing land-based operators from meaningful competition. Far from benefitting consumers this will only serve to reduce the value and choice available to them. 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 fulfil its duty as guardian of EU law by taking early action to remedy this abuse.”