Despite EU Guidelines Belgium Restricts Online Casino Market

January 07, 2010 | News Category: Gaming Law

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The European Commission has been battling to get all their member states to conform with the rules and requirements as set out by the European Union. Although the European Commission has repeatedly told Belgium that their proposed gambling laws do not comply with EU rules, Belgium seems set to go ahead in their own direction.

One of the rules and guidelines of the European Union Treaty states that there needs to be an open market throughout the EU, and that companies from other EU member states should be allowed to operate anywhere in the EU, without having a physical presence there. Having a physical presence anywhere else in the EU is supposed to be sufficient for an EU member country to accept foreign EU operations on their soil.

At this time, the proposed laws that Belgium is moving forward with has a number of elements that do not comply with the EU’s guidelines in this regard. For example, the Belgian online gambling regulations require that the online gambling operation has a physical presence in Belgium, which is certainly not backed up by the European Union Treaty.

Not only does Belgium wish to have a physical presence, they also want the online gambling operators to obtain a Belgian gambling license. The number of licenses that Belgium plans to issue are limited, and the approval process is one that favors Belgian companies over other EU companies. The European Union Treaty also requires that Belgium, and other member countries, are meant to recognize and accept the licensing authorities of any of the other EU members as if they were their own.

The rules as laid out by Belgium at the moment are designed to effectively exclude other EU members from both entering the Belgian market, and from competing with the Belgian online gambling operators. Belgian’s domestic online casino operators will be able to operate without foreign competition, in a protected economic environment.

All members of the European Union are meant to be able to compete freely in commerce, forming a single market. Companies are not meant to be bound by regional protectionism or tariffs. While there are issues in other commercial businesses, the recent trend of some EU states to ignore the regulations has arisen fairly often in the online casino and online gambling world.

Germany and France are not complying with the free trade guidelines either, and are at risk for infringement proceedings by the European Commission, since they are not allowing proper competition by other member nations with regards to their Internet gambling markets.

As with France and Germany, Belgium now also stands the risk of having to face potential damages for failure to follow the regulations of the European Commission.