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Online Gambling in Belgium
The Belgian site Radio Vlaanderen International (RVI) carried an
interesting call for Internet gaming regulations from the Games
of Chance Commission this week.
Marc Callu of the Commission has called for the recognition of bona
fide games of chance on the Internet following a boom in Internet
gambling by his countrymen.
Gambling on the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular pastime
in Belgium, says Callu, and this creates a need for greater safeguards.
He is urging lawmakers to modify existing legislation and allow
for the recognition of bona fide sites on the Internet.
Callu says that time is of the essence. The number of gambling sites
is increasing fast and there is an urgent need for player protection.
Games of chance without a special license remain illegal in Belgium,
but the law does not allow for the possibility of recognizing Internet
sites in this way. Callu says that the justice minister favors a
change in the law too, but so far government has failed to take
the initiative.
The Belgian Working Party against Gambling Addiction favors a far
more repressive approach and believes such websites should be severely
fined. It points to the 4,000 problem gamblers who are taken into
care in Belgium each year.
It's impossible to say how many Belgians gamble on the Internet,
but industry insiders believe that their number could be as high
as 90,000. The figure for Belgium is based on an extrapolation of
a Dutch study. The Dutch panel supervising games of chance quizzed
several thousand Internet users. It came to the conclusion that
over 5 percent of the people who surf the worldwide web participated
in games of chance on the Internet in the past year.
The figure was higher than the previous year and the amount of money
being wagered is higher too. The Dutch figures suggest that people
participating in games of chance on the Internet get through some
300 Euros over the year on average. This figure does not take account
of the money gambled on text message and mobile phone games.
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