Insight POLAND Legislation
Piotr Dynowski, Partner and Attorney at Law, Bird & Bird
Overtly protecting the public while actively pursuing profit
Michal Salajczyk Associate, Bird & Law
Bird & Bird is an international law firm with 30 offices across Europe. In Poland based in the Warsaw office, Piotr Dynowski is a partner and attorney at law and Michal Salajczyk is an Associate. They both specialise in the gambling sector.
www.twobirds.com
piotr.dynowski@twobirds.com
Te gambling sector in Poland is currently booming. Betting operators, the largest sub-sector where private entities operate, have doubled their turnover in the last three years. Several new operators have recently entered the market, including the major global brand Betclic. Ironically, operators enjoy this growth not thanks to a liberal approach of the regulator, as often happens in other markets, but rather despite the regulator’s restrictive stance towards them.
The Act has been amended several times. Among the main changes, an amendment explicitly allowing online betting was introduced in 2011. Before then, there were no laws that addressed this issue. In 2015, companies from abroad were allowed to apply for casino licences or bingo hall or betting permits, but they were required to establish a branch office in Poland or appoint a representative.
Gambling laws in Poland are typically considered highly prohibitive, and rightly so. Polish politicians usually paint the picture of gambling as a threat to society which ideally should be banned altogether, or at least strictly supervised by the state. In reality, this stance somehow does not prohibit the state from obtaining significant revenue from gambling tax and from gradually expanding the scope of gambling games offered by the state monopoly.
Te Act on Gambling Games (the ‘Act’), which currently regulates the sector in Poland, was enacted in 2009 as a consequence of a political scandal related to illegal lobbying in the legislative process concerning certain amendments to regulations concerning slot machines in the previous act that had regulated the gambling sector. Because of the scandal, the Act introduced regulations which in effect have gradually removed slot machine gaming parlours from the market.
Te Act has been amended several times. Among the main changes, an amendment explicitly allowing online betting was introduced in 2011. Before then, there were no laws that addressed this issue. In 2015, companies from abroad were allowed to apply for casino licences or bingo hall or betting permits, but they were required to establish a branch office in Poland or appoint a representative.
P206 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
A major revision of the Act came into force in 2017. Te amendment introduced a blacklisting mechanism for websites used for conducting unlicensed gambling. Offshore providers, thanks to not being bound by strict Polish gambling regulations, nor by steep gambling tax rates, have for years enjoyed an approximate 80-90 per cent market share in Poland, despite the fact that using their services was illegal. Licensed operators considered this situation unfair and campaigned for the government to tackle the problem. Under the amended Act, if the Minister of Finance finds that a website is used to offer gambling games to customers in Poland without a licence, he may enter that website’s URL onto a dedicated register. Over 7,600 URLs are now blacklisted, and new ones are added regularly.
Polish Internet service providers are required to reroute customers wishing to access these sites to a website hosted by the government. Payment service providers may not provide their services on such websites as well, which is intended to cut off funding for unlicensed operators. Website blacklisting in the form enacted in Poland remains controversial; its compliance with EU law is questionable, the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed disapproval of it and offshore operators are trying to challenge it in court. On the other hand, local operators praise it as a measure that has helped
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