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Belgium has announced plans to incorporate a so-called “blacklist of online gambling websites”, a move that is seen as shocking in most industry circles.
Belgium’s biggest city of Brussels is considered the de facto capital of the European Union. The EU has worked hard to abolish individual nation prohibition of Internet gambling within its membership organization, even going as far as to condemn the United States for its position against Web gambling.
From CasinoScam Report:
Starting from January 2012, Telenet, Mobistar, Base and Belgacom will block access to illegal gambling sites. The Gaming Commission will set up two lists: a white list and a black list. The white list includes gambling sites that acquired licenses from the Gaming Commission for their legal activities. The black list contains gambling sites that do not have a Gaming Commission’ license. The Gaming Commission sents the black list to the ISPs so they can block the illegal gambling sites.
Peter Naessens, head of the regulatory unit at the BGC explained: “We already have official police reports indicating which websites are operating illegally. We will see which have a significant number of Belgian players and those will be more relevant to us.”
Among those are Party.Bwin, the combined online poker and sports betting venture now considered the world’s largest Web gambling outfit.
Much like legislation currently being reviewed in the United States, Belgium would provide an outlet for its citizens to gamble exclusively with pre-determined licensed online gambling companies.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
