Belgian regulator blasts European Commission's "liberalizing mentality"
Gaming regulators from EU Member States plot formal objection to EC's attempts to introduce common player protections
The Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) is preparing to launch a formal objection against the European Commission’s (EC) recently published online gambling recommendation, after describing its own position on gaming to be “diametrically opposed” to the “liberalizing mentality” of the EC.
The recommendation, published on 14 July 2014, proposed a set of measures the EC said it believed would allow EU Member States to implement common, high-level consumer protections for online gambling players across the Union.
However, the BGC has hit out at the Commission’s stance, insisting that Member States should be left to protect their citizens by means of their own regulatory regimes as developed in accordance with the European Court of Justice.
“A unilaterally approved recommendation of the EC and the corresponding impact assessment can clearly undermine the ability of the Member States to pursue a general, coherent and autonomous gaming policy,” Peter Naessens, director at the Belgian Gaming Commission, said.
“The recommendation and the impact assessment do not offer a response to the real challenges of online regulation,” he added.
Gaming regulators from Belgium and as many as seven other EU Member States recently met to discuss the EC recommendations and how they would impact their regulation and player protections.
“This is diametrically opposed to the liberalizing attitude of the European Commission, which has been increasingly presenting itself as regulator in the field of games of chance since 2012 without the required competences to do so,” the BGC said in a statement.
The recommendation is part of the EU policy on online gambling as developed in the Commission’s Action Plan of 2012 and supported by the European Parliament through its resolution on online gambling from 2013.