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Dutch AG addresses Supreme Court in gambling debate
Advocate General Siewert Lindenbergh has stressed that online gambling contracts with operators shouldn’t be invalidated just because there was no previous Dutch licensing system.
This advice would make it more complicated for players to reclaim their money after they started seeking reimbursements of losses before the formal regulations of gambling were introduced in the Netherlands.
Offering unlicensed games of chance is banned by the Dutch Betting and Gaming Act, but there was no licensing system at the time for online gambling, so operators couldn’t apply for permits. The Remote Gambling Act was only introduced on October 1, 2021.
Courts usually accepted the claims and ordered operators to repay the losses to the players; however, Lindenbergh believes that these decisions were made based on administrative and criminal law but should have been made based on civil nullity.
Of course, the AG’s stance isn’t binding, so players are waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision.
However, other European countries have gone in a different direction, with Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruling that unlicensed contracts will be annulled and players can reclaim losses, while the Austrian Supreme Court also invalidated unlicensed operators and allowed players to request repayment.
These cases of other countries are contradictory to Lindenbergh’s view and show that illegality affects contract validity.
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