The European Gaming and Betting Association has called on the incoming European Parliament and Commission to act in the online gambling sector to ensure Europe’s online gamblers are better protected.
As Europeans head to the polls, the EGBA argues that with online betting now representing more than 20 per cent of the EU gambling market, the lack of common rules for online betting is jeopardising players safety.
That’s because EU countries have different rules for regulating online gambling and there are significant disparities in the quality of these national regulations, including the consumer protections available to online gamblers.
That view is backed up by a recent study by the City University of London which concluded that only one member state – Denmark – has fully implemented existing EU consumer protection guidelines for online gambling and that significant gaps exist in the protection of Europe’s players.
The lack of common online gambling regulations also fails to protect Europe’s players from often bogus and unsupervised websites operated from outside the EU.
Maarten Haijer, secretary general of the EGBA, said: “In 2019, there’s no reason why online gamblers living in one member country should be less protected than those living in another – but they are.
“That’s why EGBA is calling for common EU rules and better regulatory cooperation to ensure a more consistent and better standard of protection for all Europe’s online gamblers, including access to a national self-exclusion register and protection against threats from outside the EU.”
