Belgium passes new gaming legislation
March 30th, 2010 -- Posted in Online casino poker, news, online gambling | No Comments »The online casino and poker players in Belgium have now a reason to be happy as they are free to play their favourite online games without fearing legal prosecution. The nation’s Chamber Of Representatives has recently passed a law which legalizes the online gaming market and opens it to foreign operators.
This law is due to come into force by the end of 2010 and it regulates the online poker and sports-betting activities without affecting the state lottery and consequently leaving unaltered the state monopoly in this area.
Though theoretically this new legislation is supposed to open the market, in reality the situation is not so simple. In order to offer services on the Belgium market, every operator has to obtain a license but this number of licenses is limited and they are given with prevalence to the domestic operators. Therefore the market may not be so open in the end. This has been noticed also by many experts of the gaming industry who speculate that, given these legal conditions, the foreign operators will continue to offer their services from abroad which is illegal. It remains therefore to be seen if the local authorities will take further measures to stop all illegal gaming activities in the future.