The world of gambling activities has always been subject to numerous restrictions, law updates, and regulations to protect players and prevent any form of fraud. France is one of the most renamed destinations for its beautiful casino landscape. The country can boast a long history and a well-established casino culture like only a few other places on Earth.
The Unique Gambling Regulations of France
France has a unique legal framework, which encompasses physical casino venues and free online casinos. The State’s monopoly is balanced and monitored by the European Union’s directives on free trade and competition. Within such a complex regulatory landscape, the existing laws have a solid impact on the operations and activities of French online casinos. The gambling regulations dictate licensing requirements, taxation, and the types of games allowed to the general public. A deep understanding of this regulation pattern is crucial for operators and players to acquire awareness about their rights and protections.
France’s Gambling Regulation History – PMU and FDJ
We’ll focus here on the recent gambling regulation history in France, starting from 1987 when the French government established that the minimum age allowed for accessing gambling games and betting was 18. Before 1987, the legal minimum age was 21. The following year, slot machines received legal recognition after decades of ban.
A further step into the formation of a controlling structure on gambling activities took place with the introduction of two main bodies responsible for the regulation of this industry in the French territory: the PMU (Pari Mutuel Urbain) and the FDJ (Française des Jeux), both state-owned entities. While the PMU is responsible for horseracing, the FDJ deals with game betting and lotteries.
In 2010, the French government legalized online gambling. There are several reasons behind this change, one is that France needed to align with a global market trend to avoid a customer dispersion of local players who might want to look for foreign casino sites. The other reason is that the French government didn’t want to lose the revenue derived from legalizing gambling activities. As a result, the State created the ARJEL (Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne), a specific regulatory body for online gambling games.
The Development of the Online Casino Industry
The creation of ARJEL paved the way for the development of an online casino industry in France. Gambling in the country has an impressive long history, but the technology enhancements called for a modernization of the local gambling structures. The jump to the digitally based gambling environment allowed France to develop its domestic casino market.
However, the breaking change towards the legalization of digital gambling in France didn’t happen before 2005, when the European Commission decided to open an investigation into the French gambling market. A year later, France received a notice from the Commission that transformed into a request to make amends to the existing law in 2007. The objective was to align the laws with the EU laws. This caused a new bill, which appeared in 2009 to open the door to EU-based operators for accessing the French gambling market.
At this point, the bill provoked the reaction of the Remote Gambling Association, which demonstrated against the bill’s unfavorable conditions for new operators. The Association criticized several points included in the government’s bill, such as the limited range of gambling options that operators were allowed to offer, the unfavorable taxation, the low payouts for players, and strict requirements like the imposition of keeping gambling servers within the border of France.
The French Gambling Act
The journey through the gambling regulations and law updates in France appears quite hectic, especially with the introduction of the law referred to as the French Gambling Act in May 2010. This law is a milestone achievement in the French legal structure dealing with gambling as it opened the door to the rise of the online gambling market. The French Gambling Act also contributed to forming ARJEL, the official body with regulatory tasks as we’ve discussed in our previous paragraph.
The ARJEL isn’t the only body destined for the regulation of gambling in France. The Gambling Act helped the rise of other bodies: the ADLC (Autorité de la Concurrence), which is an authority entity with regulatory tasks on the competition among operators, the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel), an independent authority that regulates and protects the freedom of audiovisual communication, and the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés), a national commission for regulating the freedom of applying cybertechnologies and IT to gambling games.
Finally, the regulation of gambling licenses and the obligation to inform players about adopting responsible gambling behaviors helped casino games spread through the population at present.
