Jan Suyver, the retiring chairman of the Netherlands Gaming Authority, the Kansspelautoriteit or KSA, has gone on record as lamenting the country’s "embarrassing" failure to regulate online gaming.
Suyver, in an interview with a Dutch daily newspaper, and reported in the Dutch industry online news brief, Gaming in Holland, said: “The Netherlands is almost the last country in Europe to regulate its online gambling market.
“Everywhere where I meet with fellow regulators, whether it is Bucharest or Prague, regulation is in place. I think it is an embarrassment. In other countries people simply cannot understand why the Remote Gambling Bill has not yet been enacted.”
He added: “By doing nothing, we are preserving an illegal market that lacks any form of player protection. It is a moral obligation to enact the pending legislation.
"We once estimated that we would receive between 50 and 100 remote licence applications. It remains to be seen how many application we will actually receive. We could very well witness a shake-out.”
Suyver was succeeded by René Jansen as chairman on October 1. Jansen is a former member of the Dutch Healthcare Authority.
