Exclusive: Netherlands to release draft egaming regulation
Draft bill will be issued to stakeholders for consultation early in 2013.
The Dutch Ministry of Justice is preparing to release the country’s first draft egaming regulation, eGaming Review can exclusively reveal.
Efforts to prepare laws relating to online gambling were thought to have been put on hold since the Dutch government collapsed in late April following failed budget talks, however eGR has learned that work on draft regulations has continued within the Ministry of Justice with a plan to finalise a law to ensure no further delays will be incurred when a new government is established before the end of the year.
Politicians are currently attempting to form a coalition cabinet between the VVD right-wing liberals and the social democrats of the Dutch Labour party under a new leader, Diederik Samsom.
The draft is set to be issued to industry stakeholders early in 2013 for consultation, and despite many expecting a closed market with limited licences and games to be sought, a source close to the matter told eGR he expected the draft to mirror the more liberal Danish model. The consultation is expected to last two or three months.
Justin Franssen, head of the gaming practise group of VMW Taxand, commented: “The draft will probably come much earlier for consultation than we had originally anticipated. From just looking at what the state secretary has mentioned in the last year or so, I expect the draft to highly likely reflect a lot of the elements of the liberal Danish egaming model.
“I’d imagine now that the gambling dossier could again be put into the coalition agreement, and then head through the legislative process. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a law isn’t passed before the end of next year.”
Currently state-run De Lotto is the only company in The Netherlands with a licence to run lotteries and games of chance in which the participants pick their own numbers.
Plans for Dutch egaming regulation first surfaced in October 2010, when the Dutch government has confirmed it intends to issue online gaming licences in an attempt to regulate an industry which could bring in 10m a year in the auctioning of licences alone.
However little progress has been made, and authorities instructed offshore operators to block Dutch players from accessing their sites in February this year following a Supreme Court ruling the ban on international gambling firms operating in The Netherlands did not breach EU free trade agreements.
A move to a model reflecting the Danish system launched in January this year would be a stark contract to its neighbour, Belgium. The Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) has been bullish in its pursuit of those operators that continue to serve the country’s citizens without a licence, introducing a blacklist which already includes high-profile names such as bet365, bwin.party and Winamax.
However, its compliance with European law has been contested with some taking issue with the requirement that operators must first possess a land-based licence (or a partnership with a land-based licensee) in order to receive online accreditation.
To date, both bwin.party and bet-athome have taken the BGC to court, with the former seeing its claims dismissed and the latter case yet to be resolved.