By Thijs Stolk (student E-commerce in the in the Law & Technology (LLM) Programme)
It’s illegal to offer gambling services in the Netherlands without a permit. This rule also applies for online gambling. The Dutch government regulates the whole gambling market and is considered to be in direct opposition to the European Union and its subsidiary principle. The EU is pushing its members to open their markets to competition, art. 49 EC Treaty / 50 TEU (the free movement of services). I think that the gambling market does not deserve full competition though!
In the Netherlands every year 400.000 people are gambling a total of 7.500.000 times in Holland Casino. This casino is regulated by the state and has been given a monopoly position. It has been incorporated in 1975 to offer legal gambling options and reduce the negative aspects. As anyone knows gambling is very addictive, there has always been a big black market and it is attractive for criminals. Holland Casino is regulated by the Dutch authorities and the Ministry of Justice. They pay taxes like every other company and these amounts to around 100 million Euros a year. A few years ago, the EU decided that gambling is a legal activity and warned our country many times to get rid of the barriers.
I think the Dutch government must stick to its own plan in this case. Especially with the rise in popularity of online poker, strict rules are necessary for social health. Many people play poker on the internet and some of them do it very often. This is a very dangerous development. Research has proved that gambling on the internet is much more addictive than offline gambling. People and especially young people are often “online” and form the biggest risk groups. The internet is anonymous and therefore extremely dangerous. Before we had the internet it took more effort to gamble somewhere. Nowadays it is very easy to do it from your own home. After a short registration online you can play poker all day long. In the Netherlands, online gambling is forbidden, but are we doing illegal business while playing?
Most of the casinos which are active on the internet have a permit in the Domicile. The casinos are covered by the law and rules of these countries. Examples are Antigua, Gibraltar and Malta. For them it is very lucrative. Some casinos pay up to 100 million a year to get a license. Besides this, they also offer employment to people.
Playing poker online on websites who have a permit in another country is still “illegal” in Holland. “Brussels” wants us to open up our markets for online gambling, but the Dutch government doesn’t listen and refuses to open the markets. I believe that it is a good contention. Why does the EU want to force Member States to do things which are truly dangerous for social health? This probably has to do with money!
Every year the EU collects up to 3 billion Euros from the online gambling market. This is also the most important source for international sports events. Besides this, most of the Member States traditionally regulated their own gambling markets in order to protect consumers against addiction, fraud and other criminal behavior. It appears that the EU has to make a difficult choice, more regulation or deregulation of gambling rules.
In my opinion, the best solution to this problem is to regulate the market at national level, with certain leading rules from “above”. Every Member State has the right to protect their consumers in a way it thinks is the best. For example, some political parties in Holland wanted to experiment with offering “legal” online gambling. This idea contained a temporary permit for Holland Casino to offer online gambling. The advantages are clear. The State checks for negative aspects like addictions, privacy protection and criminal actions and they are also responsible for collecting the taxes. The same reasons why in the past Holland Casino was founded. Unfortunately this, in my point of view, very good idea has not made it.
Not only the Netherlands are willing to do something against the online gambling market, countries like France and Greece are thinking about the same problems. For this reason the European Commission (EC) started an infringement against 10 Member States. The EC wanted to check how the national rules against online gambling agree with the free movement of services of the Community (art. 49 EC Treaty / 50 TEU), because there are no rules specifically for transgressing gambling activities. It seems like the EU knows it must do something but doesn’t know what to do. The European Parliament (EP) therefore accepted a resolution in March 2009 to stimulate collaboration between Member States. But strict rules are not given and the infringement against amongst others the Netherlands still counts. From this point of view the decision of the European Court of justice (ECJ) in the case Bwin vs. Portugal on 8 September 2009 is very important. This was the first time the ECJ specifically focused itself on online gambling. Portugal has, just like the Netherlands, highly restricted gambling laws and a state-regulated monopoly (Sante Casa). UK internet sports betting group Bwin was offering Online sportsbook in Portugal and struck a sponsorship deal with the Portuguesa Professional Football League. This led to a dispute. The Portuguese court sought the ruling of the ECJ and they finally concluded some monopolies are acceptable. For me the decision means a great victory against “Brussels”. Now Member States can choose certain restrictions against gambling which override EU law (art. 46 EC Treaty / 56 TEU), if the general interest is being served by the rule. Non-discrimination is required though.
Unfortunately the outcome of the case doesn’t mean that Holland is safe now. Tenders of online gambling cannot be prevented just like that. National judges must criticize every case different from one another. The consequence is that until that time, you as a consumer, are (still) doing illegal business (according to Dutch law) when playing poker or gamble online in the Netherlands. But don’t worry, there is no punishment on breaking the rules. You even can “laundry” your illegal earned money by the Dutch government.
That’s why I say: “Regulation is a mess, it’s time for clear rules”!
Tags: online gambling
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 10:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
van http://vortex.uvt.nl/TILTblog/?p=201#more-201 een van de meest slecht stukken die ik afgelopen tijd gepubliceerd heb gezien. En ik vraag me ook af wat dit stuk doe op website van universiteit. Geen onderbouwing van de conclusies niks. Redeneringen van likmevestje. Vind het geen reclame voor uni Tilburg.