The Belgian Gambling Commission has warned that years of underfunding and rigid state controls have left it unable to effectively regulate the country’s booming gambling sector, calling on lawmakers to grant it full autonomy to manage its own staff and resources.
The Commission des jeux de hasard (CJH), Belgium’s gambling regulator, has issued a sharply worded advisory opinion on draft law, which aims to strengthen player protection and improve regulatory oversight. While welcoming the intent of the proposal, the Commission said the measures will fall short unless the government addresses what it calls a “structural insufficiency” in staff and independence.
“It is necessary that the Commission, as an independent regulator, can not only strategically determine its staffing needs but also implement them operationally,” the CJH stated. “Only in this way can it achieve a personnel level comparable, in proportion, to regulators in neighbouring countries with similar missions.”
The advisory, adopted on 24 October 2025 by a majority of five votes to four, reflects growing tension between the regulator and the federal authorities that control its recruitment and budget. The Commission said that bureaucratic obstacles at the Ministry of Justice have paralysed hiring and that the body now operates with fewer staff than it did 15 years ago, despite a vastly expanded mandate.
According to its report, the regulator had just 32.8 full-time equivalents in July 2025, down from 39.3 in 2023. Its approved framework foresees 57 positions, but the Commission says it actually needs around 80 to perform its legal duties properly.
“The Commission des jeux de hasard currently has a staff framework lower than fifteen years ago, while the sector has continued to grow,” the report notes. “The situation has become even more worrying than two years ago.”
It pointed to a list of posts that have remained unfilled for years due to “excessively long” recruitment procedures under the Ministry of Justice. Current waiting times range from five months for a control officer to two and a half years for a data analyst, the Commission said.
The Commission said this “unsustainable” situation has been repeatedly denounced without effect.
“A durable solution to this situation, denounced for years, is therefore indispensable,” the CJH wrote.
In support of its argument, the Commission cited international comparisons showing that it is severely under-resourced. The Netherlands’ gambling authority expects 230 staff by 2026, Germany’s regulators together employ 145, and the UK Gambling Commission has 413 employees. Even France’s new regulator “currently counts more than 80 people,” while Denmark’s has 130. Belgium’s, by contrast, operates with fewer than 40.
Recent figures underline the stakes: a government-commissioned study found that 53 percent of Belgians aged 18 to 30 have gambled despite new restrictions, with 28 percent admitting to having used unlicensed platforms. Meanwhile, Belgium’s largest operators, grouped in the BAGO association, have urged Brussels to coordinate gambling-harm rules across the EU but to reject calls for a single “European licence”, arguing that “a single European passport for gambling is not a feasible or desirable solution” and would risk a regulatory “race to the bottom.”
The draft law under debate proposes to set in legislation a minimum of ten full-time control officers and to double the number of police officers attached to the Commission from four to eight. While welcoming the intention, the CJH warned that such fixed quotas could backfire.
“Fixing the number of employees in the law could be counterproductive because it would freeze that figure in stone and complicate any further growth,” the report said. “Rather than working with legal quotas of staff, the Commission should have the autonomy to conduct its own personnel policy and organise its own recruitment.”
The CJH says this lack of autonomy undermines not only its control efforts but also its capacity to follow through with sanctions. “Increasing only the number of controllers to draw up more reports is of little use if no one can follow up,” it warned, noting that the sanctions department currently has only “one part-time employee.”
Beyond staffing, the Commission also raised the issue of financing. Under Belgian law, the regulator is funded by annual contributions from gambling operators, intended to cover all its operating costs. The draft law proposes indexing those contributions each year. The CJH noted that indexation “is already possible” but supported the principle, given rising expenses and inflation.
“Since all the operating costs of the Commission and its secretariat must be covered by operators’ contributions, it is logical that these increase in the same proportion as the Commission’s needs,” the opinion stated.
However, the Commission said it continues to face restrictions in accessing its own funds. The regulator’s dedicated fund, which holds more than €50 million, cannot currently be used for recurrent expenses such as salaries, due to government-imposed limits. The CJH called on Parliament to revisit this rule, arguing that it contradicts previous rulings by Belgium’s Constitutional Court.
The Commission’s leadership said that as long as its budget and staffing are dependent on ministerial approval, its regulatory independence remains “largely theoretical.”
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