The court decision adds a new twist to the case of the obligation for betting agencies to check their customers at the entrance. The decision suspends the obligation to check the identity of bettors at the entrance of agencies and the use of the Epis list of banned gamblers. Since last October, every customer who comes to bet in a gambling agency must be duly registered, with the presentation of an identity card, a photo and a signature. The data is kept for a period of ten years.

Abusive, intrusive, discriminatory

From the start, Upap (Union Professionnelle des Agences de Paris) challenged this obligation, finding it abusive, intrusive and discriminatory. "Our clients are being treated like criminals," said Yannik Bellefroid, head of the Ladbrokes betting shops. "I would like to point out that everyone is in favour of protecting players," Mr Bellefroid told us on Wednesday. "As long as we respect data protection. We continue to take protective measures, as we were already doing, and to do prevention. But what the court ruling says is that we will no longer use Epis and that we will no longer take people's data. The state must review its copy. And we are once again asking the Minister of Justice (Vincent Van Quickenborne) to meet with those involved in the field, which he has always refused to do."

Bookshops

If Upap talks about discrimination, it is because bookshops are not subject to the same obligations. Even though some bookshops offer bets (sports or not) of exactly the same type as in betting agencies. Precisely, argue the agency sector and the 200 agency managers involved in the appeal before the Namur court of first instance, the turnover of the agencies has decreased. This is because bettors, who want their privacy to be respected, have preferred to desert betting agencies to go to bookshops... or to illegal sites. "These are people who no longer enter our agencies because they find it invasive to their privacy. It's an exaggeration to take my photo and my signature," says Yannik Bellefroid.

The plaintiffs against the Belgian state are defended by three lawyers, Audrey Lackner, Audrey Despontin and Saba Parsa. "The judgement says that the obligation is contrary to articles of the Constitution, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights on the freedom of enterprise," says Audrey Lackner. "It therefore orders the State to stop applying the Epis system and prohibits checks until a decision on the legal merits (in this case, we are in summary proceedings) or until the State puts itself in order. We are not talking about a simple tidying up of the text. That said, our clients insist on this point, we are not questioning the protection of players, this is not an action against the Epis system. What is being challenged is the register of access to betting agencies and the discrimination against bookshops.