The Court of Auditors published a report this Thursday, with the aim of “strengthening” regularization by strengthening the National Gaming Authority (ANJ), to cope with a rapidly expanding gambling sector. and mutation. “This is not a criticism, it is an incentive to do more, to do better in terms of regulation”, underlined its president, Pierre Moscovici, to the press, recalling that it was an “authority nascent”.
Since the 1990s, the sector has experienced “significant revolutions” between opening to competition and digitalization, recalls the Court of Auditors. While almost half of French adults would gamble and almost a quarter would bet, according to its report, the highest financial court recommends “consolidating” the powers of the National Gaming Authority (ANJ), installed in 2020.
The ANJ does not have its own sanctioning power
The ANJ does not have its own sanctioning power. If operators do not comply with its obligations, it can refer the matter to the sanctions commission. Between incentive and sanction, an intermediate lever is the formal notice to recalcitrant operators to comply with the authority’s requests. However, this tool currently falls solely under the jurisdiction of the Sanctions Commission.
The Court of Auditors thus proposes to “give the president of the ANJ the possibility, prior to referral to the sanctions commission, to put operators on notice to comply with his requests”. “If the ability to issue this formal notice and make it public were delegated to the president of the ANJ, he could react more quickly than today,” she believes.
the ANJ must establish its doctrine of action to “avoid any economic destabilization”
According to Mr. Moscovici, the ANJ should also have “reinforced expertise in relation to technological changes”, a necessary condition for it to continue “the development of tools for blocking illegal sites”. In this perspective, the Court recommends “establishing by 2024, within the ANJ, a multidisciplinary center for monitoring, collection, analysis and research specializing in games”.
For the Court of Auditors, the ANJ must also set its action doctrine during its next strategic plan in order to better define one of the objectives assigned to it: “Ensure compliance with the balanced exploitation of different types of games in order to to avoid any economic destabilization of the sectors concerned.