KSA wants changes in Dutch gambling legislation to increase powers for surveillance 

The KSA has proposed several changes to the Netherlands’ gambling legislation.

The Netherlands.- The Dutch regulator Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has made recommendations for several changes to Dutch gambling legislation. It made the proposals in a legislative letter to Fran Weerwind, the Netherlands’ minister for legal protection ahead of a review of the Remote Gambling Act (ROA) planned next year.

The KSA said it was submitting the recommendations now because it believes them to be too important to wait until next year’s evaluation. Its most urgent ask is for the law to be changed to allow it to create fake identities to monitor whether operators are complying with gambling regulations. 

Currently, only Holland’s National Office for Identity Data can create false IDs for the purposes of surveillance. The KSA says it needs to be allowed to do the same in order to monitor online gambling more efficiently and effectively.

It’s also requested that changes be made to legislation around the use of data from licensees. Currently, licensed operators must submit a selection of gaming systems data to a control database, but the data can only be used for supervision and enforcement. The KSA wants it to be usable for analysis and research in order to provide a factual basis for policymaking as well as supervision.

The gambling regulator also suggested that legislation should make involuntary registration on the Cruks gambling exclusion system less complex and that the current six-month period before deregistration should be extended.

Relatives or operators can request players be added to Cruks, but the KSA said that very few players have been added in this way. It suggested that this is because the process is too complex, casting doubt on its usefulness for tackling gambling addiction.

Finally, the KSA recommended bringing legislation on land-based slot machines in line with that for online slots. It said the current legislation was outdated and was becoming “increasingly incompatible” with new technical developments.

Earlier this week, the KSA announced that it has issued a fine against Bingoal for marketing to under 24s. It issued a €400,000 fine for emails and messages sent between October 1 2021 and April 1 2022.

Meanwhile, the KSA has appointed new joint independent chairs for its Objections Advisory Committee. The role will be split between Adriane Koppe and Monique van Oers, who will both serve three-year terms.

They will replace J.M.E. Feije, whose tenure expires this month. The KSA said it had decided to split the role between two people because a rise in the number of sanctions had led to more objection procedures to be dealt with.