EU MOVES TOWARDS STANDARDIZED REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR ONLINE GAMBLING
Pursuant to the Regulation 1025/2012 of the European Parliament and European Council on European Standardization and the 2012 communication of the European Commission named Towards a Comprehensive Framework for Online Gambling and after the months of consultations with the Industry’s stakeholders, the European Commission has officially requested the European Committee for Standardization to compile the European set of standards (reporting requirements) regarding the supervision of online gambling services. The draft standards are due to be compiled until the end of September. The Committee has proceeded the request and formed the Working Committee CEN/TC 456.
Once adopted, the adherence to these requirements will be mandatory for all the EU-based gambling operators upon preparing regulatory returns to the corresponding gambling authorities.
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the association bringing together National Standardization Bodies of 34 European countries, is the leading provider of EU-wide standards for broad spectrum of products and services, with the purpose of protecting the customers, developing businesses opportunities within the Single Market and advocating the creation of a cross-border framework for innovative economic cooperation.
For the first time after the Commission’s December decision to close down all the Industry-related infringement cases, the EU took a role in strengthening its role of safeguarding customer safety and fairness of gambling and gaming products. This is also a step forward in tackling, on a system level, ever-growing number of attempts directed to using gambling as the means of legitimizing the criminal proceeds (money laundering, terrorist financing, match-fixing et al).
The reporting requirements will particularly focus on the following data: calculation of tax levies, customer information safety, account registration and deactivation, physical and IP address of the customers, deposit methods, user activity, player self-exclusion history, operator’s GGR and marketing campaigns.
