Man’s natural inclination to gamble has always existed and will probably exist for all time. On the basis of this inescapable reality, any outright prohibition of gambling would inevitably have been counterproductive and would have embroiled this sphere of activity in an element of wild and therefore socially dangerous clandestinity. Being perfectly conscious of this reality, the Legislator, already in 1851, preferred to authorise the organisation of certain games, and lotteries in particular, but under strict conditions.
For the games organised by the National Lottery, a public-law limited company, the conditions, inter alia, have been laid down by its organic Act of 19 April 2002 and, in addition, by the management contract between the public company and the Belgian State, as well as by the Royal Decree establishing its Articles of Association. While, under the terms of its organic Act of 19 April 2002, the National Lottery’s primary mission consists of organising, in the general interest and according to commercial methods, public lotteries, betting opportunities, competitions and games of chance, the management contract has in addition entrusted it with a parallel mission of being a socially responsible public operator.
The objective is to channel the various manifestations of gambling behaviour in Belgium, to prevent any excess, to protect vulnerable customers and to make an active and autonomous contribution to the prevention and treatment of gambling addiction.
The National Lottery endeavours in addition to help to limit the total size of the games of chance market in Belgium by focusing its product development and marketing policies not on the enlargement of the market but on winning market share from private operators, whether they be Belgian or foreign, authorised or illegal. It is thus that it has to generate, in a socially responsible manner, the funds enabling it to honour its financial obligations with respect to the Treasury and the beneficiaries of its grants. While this mission is in equal measure onerous, noble and enthralling, it most of all resembles a delicate balancing act seeking to find an appropriate match between, on the one hand, the assuaging of Man’s natural propensity to gamble and, on the other, the objective of maintaining the latter at a state of inoffensive entertainment.
MISSION ENTRUSTED BY LEGISLATION
Transformed since 16 July 2002 into a public-law limited company by the Act of 19 April 2002, the National Lottery is required to organise, in the general interest and according to commercial methods:
- Public lotteries, betting opportunities and competitions in the forms and according to the general procedures laid down by the King, based on a proposal from his appropriate Minister;
- Games of chance in the forms and according to the general procedures laid down by the King, by decree deliberated in the Council of Ministers, on a proposal of his appropriate Minister and the Minister of Justice, and following the opinion of the Games Of Chance Commission. The Act of 19 April 2002 also stipulates that:
The aforesaid activities are public service tasks :
- The National Lottery enjoys a monopoly in respect of the organisation of public lotteries as well as the right to make use of information society tools for the organisation of betting opportunities, competitions and games of chance;
- A management contract, entered into between the Belgian State and the National Lottery, defines the conditions according to which the latter accomplishes its public service tasks, i.e. the respective rights and duties of the National Lottery and the Belgian State towards each other;
MISSION ENTRUSTED BY MANAGEMENT CONTRACT
Espousing the spirit of the Act of 19 April 2002, the management contract in existence between the Belgian State and the National Lottery has, among other aspects, consecrated the guide lines that the latter must follow in order to achieve its mission as “a socially responsible and professional provider of recreational pleasures”.
Although for the promotion of the games that it organises, the National Lottery, following the example of private companies, can have recourse to powerful marketing methods, it is however required to use them for the simultaneous achievement of two vitally important objectives:
- To provide targeted channelling of gambling behaviour in Belgium, by lavishing recreational pleasures on a broad group of people by means of entertaining games that can constitute an alternative to private and/or illegal games. This channelling duty implies that it attracts the existing devotees of lotteries, betting opportunities and games of chance by means of a modern and attractive offer, without enlarging the size of the Belgian market;
- To take care that, by its gambling policy, it does not cause addiction. This policy goes from the development of new games to their distribution, and includes the content of the advertising that relates to them. The National Lottery must in addition make an active and autonomous contribution to the prevention and treatment of gambling addiction by supporting initiatives in this respect.
EXECUTION OF THE MISSIONS
These two missions lead the National Lottery concretely to develop a marketing and institutional policy which, in addition to its responsible and professional nature, must ensure the availability, legality, integrity, security, transparency and proper course of the games offered to customers, while protecting minors and preventing behaviour that could generate addiction.
Availability
The availability of the games must be such that games enthusiasts are not obliged to turn to games that are illegal and/or involving greater risks of addiction and fewer guarantees of legality, integrity, security and transparency. It must therefore be ensured by a distribution network covering the whole of the Kingdom and enabling customers to have access to an sales outlet within a reasonable geographical radius. The National Lottery ensures that there is at least one approved sales outlet per commune, regardless of profitability considerations, which constitutes one of the factors that distinguishes it from private operators.
Legality
The National Lottery rigorously complies with the legislation to which it is subject. Each new game that it wants to launch and which has beforehand been the subject of a favourable effects report from the point of view of the risk of addiction is submitted for the approval of its appropriate Minister and gives rise to the promulgation of a Royal Decree that lays down its rules. By so doing, the State plays a regulator role. This is done so that the regulations of the National Lottery’s games are as watertight as possible and do not present any loophole lending itself to divergent interpretations. Thus the legal safety to which users are entitled is guaranteed.
Integrity and Security
The security of the games and the rigour of the control procedures during their manufacturing and operational processes constitute requirements that cannot be circumvented. In fact, by relying on sophisticated computing technology and techniques, the National Lottery offers games that are characterised by optimal reliability.
• The scratch games are manufactured by printers with an entirely secure industrial process. This process is designed to guarantee the random printing of the batches on the tickets, the latter, once finished, being subject to physical, chemical and data-processing tests intended to guarantee the highest standards of security (with regard to the opacity of the scratch layer, for example). The computer infrastructure that connects the National Lottery to its sale network enables automated reading of the tickets, optimal traceability of the unscratched tickets and reinforced security for the payment of the prizes resulting from scratched tickets.
• For the drawing by lot games, thanks to the tried and tested computing techniques that it uses, the National Lottery provides a maximum guarantee of the stakes. Security procedures enable it to eliminate any attempt of hacking and/or transformation of the information transmitted by the sales outlet terminals to its central computer. Prior to the public drawings by lot, the closure of the stakes is placed under the control of a bailiff, who also controls the drawings.
• The National Lottery has been certified by the Worldwide Lotteries Association (WLA), which attests that the many security standards in place, both internally and externally, are being met.
• As a public-law limited company, and contrary to private operators, even legal ones, of games of chance and bets, the National Lottery is subject to many controls of an administrative, financial and democratic nature.
• It is first or all subject to the control of its appropriate Minister and, for decisions of a budgetary or financial nature, to the control of the Minister of Finance. For the implementation of those controls, the King appoints, for each of those two ministers, a Government Commissioner. To ensure the respect of the law, the National Lottery’s organic Articles of Association and management contract, and to make sure that the National Lottery’s policy does not impair the execution of the public service tasks, these government commissioners attend the National Lottery’s management committee and board meetings and can take note of all documents, require explanations and information and carry out all checks necessary for the exercise of their mandate. They can in addition lodge a suspensory appeal with their ministers against decisions that they consider to be contrary to the law, the Articles of Association or the management contract. In his or her turn, the appropriate minister makes a report each year to the Federal Legislative Houses on the National Lottery operation. The House of Representatives and the Senate can furthermore at any time require information by means of oral or written questions, which are published, with the answers given, in their respective Question and Answer Bulletins, consultable via the Internet. As for the control of the financial position, the annual accounts and the legality of the accountancy, this is entrusted to a college of three auditors, one of whom is appointed by the Court of Auditors, with the two others being members of the Royal Institute of Company Auditors.
• The National Lottery’s mission, and the conditions under which it has to function by law, are much stricter than those that apply to private game operators. To subject the National Lottery to the same body as that which controls the legality of private initiatives, would lead, in fact, to its virtual paralysis. This is why, in addition to the many public controls already in place, the National Lottery will have to take account of the opinions of the Responsible Gambling Committee that will be created at the beginning of 2006. The legal mission of this committee is to ensure that the National Lottery behaves responsibly with regards to gambling, and, to do so, to establish directives, to check their application and to formulate opinions. It is composed of three members of the National Lottery’s board of directors and three members coming from the academic world, independent of the National Lottery and experts in various aspects of responsible gambling behaviour, corporate social responsibility, and so on.
Transparency
Customers are entitled to the greatest transparency and to complete and precise commercial information. Concretely, they can consult the rules and results of the games in the sales outlets, at the National Lottery or on its website. On this website, they can also take note of the annual business report and lodge any complaint in writing with a “Contact Point” created within the National Lottery. That Contact Point examines the complaints, answers the complainants and can give impetus impulse to the search for and the implementation for structural solutions to the announced problems or shortcomings.
Prevention of Undesirable Behaviour and Excessive Gambling
The National Lottery must take care to prevent any excess in the context of responsible marketing of games.
Protection of Minors
It is necessary to protect minors against themselves not only in the field of alcohol and drugs but also in that of games of chance. While it is true that the prevailing atmosphere in the National Lottery’s sales outlets is dissimilar to that of casinos, gaming rooms or cafés and although its organic Articles of Association do not lay down any provision prohibiting gambling with underage minors, the regulating authority has imposed this limitation via Royal Decrees laying down the participation rules for the games organised by the National Lottery. Public awareness campaigns in the sales network are already regularly conducted, focusing on this ban on the under-eighteens from taking part. These campaigns have to be increased in future and severe sanctions are envisaged. The National Lottery furthermore refrains from designing and marketing games targeting minors, and from showing, in its advertisements, minors involved in the playing of money games. Nor are the advertising campaigns addressed to the underaged.
Prevention of Addiction Phenomena
For most players, gambling is a form of relaxation and recreation. However, certain players can no longer control their compulsions. They gamble day and night, spend a great deal of money on gambling and develop an addiction to it that can have serious consequences. The appearance of games on the Internet has made matters worse because of the total lack of social control, the 24/7 availability, the use of credit cards, the characteristics of the websites and the games themselves, all of which increase the addiction etc. Even tough, as scientific research has shown, the games organised by the National Lottery present a virtually non-existent risk of addiction, contrary to other games of chance, in particular bingo halls, casinos, betting and gambling via the Internet, the National Lottery is nevertheless sensitive to the problems of excessive play. It intends to act as a socially responsible and professional provider or recreational pleasures and endeavours not to market products that foster addiction. Thus, before the launch of any new game, it orders a study from the Responsible Gaming Committee and, if necessary, from a group of independent experts specialising in research into gambling addiction, and it launches a new game only if a favourable effects report is received. The National Lottery goes even further. It finances scientific research in the field of pathological gambling and contributes to the dissemination of the results obtained.
The National Lottery launches public awareness campaigns via its sales network with brochures, posters and stickers and via its website and via those of the major Belgian newspapers. Banners are included on those websites that constitute links towards the Responsible Gaming’s information website, which lavishes advice and useful information for people at risk and their entourage. To prevent addiction among the young, informative CD-ROMS have been designed for schools. It also participates in the creation of a network of doctors, psychologists and other therapists specialising in the problems of gambling addiction.
In addition, campaigns have to be run for front-line assistance workers and extra efforts have to be made to increase the sales network’s awareness of gambling addiction problems. Contacts between the National Lottery and the Games of Chance Commission take place periodically in order to co-ordinate the authority’s policy with regard to games of chance and the National Lottery’s policy.
Social Mission
While the channelling of gambling and the prevention of excessive behaviour amounts to a social mission of primary importance, it is another that constitutes a by-product that is both appreciable and appreciated by the community: the allocation of grants to organisations and activities of general interest. Each year, the Federal Government determines, by Royal Decree deliberated in the Council of Ministers and on a proposal from the Minister who has the National Lottery among his or her attributions, the National Lottery grant apportionment plan. The management contract between the Belgian State and the National Lottery lays down, until 2007, the annual amount of grants at EUR 210,191,000. Grants are distributed to a large range of sectors with callings that include social, sporting, cultural, family or scientific, and to matters of national prestige. New initiatives are also supported, in particular those relating to sustainable development. The totality of these grants makes the National Lottery Belgium’s largest patron, a prestigious title of which the company is duly proud. As a public company that is extremely conscious of its social role, the National Lottery does not always use the sponsorship instrument in the way that a purely commercial company would. In addition to product-oriented sponsorship, it uses also the instrument of social or goodwill sponsoring, focused on the National Lottery’s image as a public welfare organisation. Initiativesencouraging, at reduced price, the integration and wellbeing of underprivileged categories of the population (Resto du Coeur, Christmas Dinners, visits to shows and exhibitions, also at reduced prices, are a good example of this.
In broad outline, the grants are distributed as follows:
Amounts reserved for grants at the Federal Level:
- Share reserved for matters directly referred to by the Act: the National Lottery traditionally supports Development Co-operation, the Belgian Survival Fund, the National Calamity Fund and the King Baudouin Foundation;
- Share reserved for public service purposes: initiatives in family, social, humane, patriotic, scientific, cultural, economic, intellectual or sporting matters, for example at the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee for the preparation of the Belgian athletes for the Olympic Games, at the Special Olympics Belgium, at the National Scientific Research Fund for fundamental scientific research on cancer and cardiovascular diseases for example, at the Belgium Red Cross, at Child Focus, at the Poisons Centre, at WWF Belgium, at the international Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Music Competition, and so on and so forth.
For grants relating more specifically of the jurisdiction of certain Federal Government Ministers, the ministers or authorities concerned are involved in their apportionment.
Amounts Reserved For Federal-Entity-Level Grants:
Further to the Lambermont Agreements and under the terms of Clause 41 of the special Act of 13 July 2001 to do with the refinancing of the Communities and the extension of fiscal competences of the regions (Belgian Gazette of 03 August 2001), 27.44% of the overall annual amount of the National Lottery subsidies shall, since its 2002 financial year, be directly transferred to the three Communities (Flemish, French and German-speaking), which shall then decide, totally independently, the use that shall be made of their respective grants The sectors thus indirectly receiving National Lottery grants include inter alia fields involved with the handicapped, the elderly, the environment, teaching, the practice of sports, and so on.
SAFEGUARDING THE MISSION
It arises from the National Lottery’s missions that it exercises an eminently social role by offering an alternative to private games, be they illegal or not, which contributes to curb the phenomena of gambling addiction, criminality and money laundering. And, as expressed by the “You Play, You Help” slogan, a highly significant part of the profit is returned to society in the form of grants allocated to organisations and activities concerned with the general interest. This is why another of the National Lottery duties consists of acting in such a way that it can continue to exercise this role of society protection and continue to finance good causes. This vision stems from the conviction that the lotteries and games of chance market should not be liberalised. The National Lottery is intending to keep its monopoly. In a liberalised market, the National Lottery would be obliged, in order not to be the subject of a take-over or not to endure exaggerated competition, to apply the same aggressive sales and marketing techniques as the private sector, to discontinue the sale of unprofitable products, to offer games entailing a greater danger of addiction, all of which would be contrary to its public service mission. To fulfil this social mission, the National Lottery must keep a close eye on political developments, not only at the European level but also at the national level, inform the decision makers of the social risks generated by certain legislative intentions and defend the Belgian monopolistic model before the European Commission and, if need be, before the European Court of Justice.