The Professional Union of Betting Agencies (UPAP), SA Derby, which operates betting establishments under the Ladbrokes brand, and more than 200 betting establishments have just won a major victory in court. Even if it is provisional, the decision taken by the Namur court of first instance to suspend identity checks at the entrance of betting agencies will be a landmark.    

In fact, the agencies, defended by Audrey Despontin (Sybarius) and Audrey Lackner (Vega), were challenging the legality of the Royal Decree of 20 March 2022 extending access control and the recording of a series of personal data to betting establishments. Among the new measures included in these texts is the obligation for agencies to check whether players are not on a list of persons banned from entering these establishments. The aim was to check the identity card of players and to encode this data in the "EPIS" system (Excluded Persons Information System) before keeping it for ten years. The EPIS system was set up to protect consumers from gambling addiction.    

Faced with this new control obligation, the agencies went to court to have the law annulled before the Council of State. If they failed to do so, UPAP and the agencies sued the State for liability before the Namur court of first instance. The betting agencies considered that the latest regulations were contrary to the European regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (GDPR).    

Police use of photos  

During the proceedings before the Council of State, it emerged that the photos taken during the identity check by the betting agencies could have been used for other purposes by the police. The agencies provided evidence of requests from the police to know the identity of one or other player who had come to their premises. Similarly, UPAP and the agencies have identified a series of technical flaws that do not guarantee the security of the data collected.  

The agencies also invoked the violation of the principles of equality and non-discrimination, explaining that such identity checks were not compulsory in bookshops offering National Lottery products and sports betting. "The distinction intended by the legislature between bookshops and betting agencies thus seems neither objective nor reasonable," the order reads.  

The court therefore ruled that the royal decree and the law validating it were contrary to the GDPR regulation and to Articles 10, 11 and 12 of the Constitution. The judge ordered the provisional repeal of the contested regulation pending a decision on the merits or pending new legislation. The court found that the State was at fault and ordered it to stop carrying out controls on the basis of the regulation.  

"We are in favour of all measures aimed at protecting consumers as long as they are respectful of personal data. And in view of the pitfalls into which the National Lottery itself has fallen with the loss of data of 300,000 customers who ended up on the darknet, this is a risk to which we do not wish to be exposed as a responsible operator", explained Yannik Bellefroid, the president of the UPAP, before pointing out "the government's stubbornness in imposing a rule which, in all objectivity, is contrary to the RGPD and is discriminatory". "Gambling operators are not scoundrels. They participate in the economy of this country", said the UPAP president, who believes that at-risk gamblers must be protected, but not with disproportionate means.