French gambling regulator names head of new enforcement department
Sophie Namer will lead the ANJ’s new Directorate of Enforcement.
France.- The French gambling regulator L’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) has named Sophie Namer to head up its newly created enforcement department. The new Directorate of Enforcement was established on July 11 as part of the regulator’s new organisational structure.
The regulator’s reorganisation is intended to “strengthen enforcement actions and the fight against the supply of illegal gambling.” Namer is an administrative magistrate who has served for six years at the Administrative Courts of Limoges and Toulouse as a rapporteur and public rapporteur.
Namer will be supported in the new role by Jérôme Labarbe as deputy director of the Directorate of Enforcement.
Meanwhile, the ANJ has also created a new Directorate of Data, Markets and Innovation. The department will be responsible for monitoring the French gambling market and for oversight of the JONUM innovation programme and for identifying and implementing new ways to make use of data in the sector.
Pauline Hot was appointed as the new director general of the ANJ in July. She replaces Rémi Latastem, who left the position after five years to become director general of the Parisian inter-university campus Campus Condorcet.
Hot had been deputy director general of the ANJ since January. A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (Hannah Arendt Class), she has been an auditor since 2020, then a master of requests at the Council of State. There, she served as rapporteur to the 6th chamber of the litigation section and to the administration section.
Meanwhile, the ANJ has proposed new policy recommendations ahead of the next World Cup, including a call for a whistle-to-whistle ban on gambling ads during sports broadcasts. The ban would be similar to the voluntary initiatives introduced in Britain by the Betting and Gaming Council in 2019 and more recently in Ireland by the Irish Bookmakers Association.
Those measures prohibit the use of gambling ads during sports broadcasts starting from five minutes before the start of sports broadcasts until five minutes after the end.
