During a debate in the Dutch Parliament over changing the country's gambling laws, MPs said that raising the gambling age in stages could keep players from going to the black market.
 Changes to Dutch gaming laws
 Teun Struycken, the State Secretary for Legal Protection, made these ideas during a meeting of the parliament's standing committee on justice and security yesterday (March 28) as part of a discussion about gaming reform in the Netherlands.

 Politicians from different parties got together to talk about some of their main issues with the gambling industry and the Netherlands' ongoing gambling reform.

 The current rules just went into force in 2021, but a long evaluation that started in 2024 has raised worries in a number of areas, such as that players are not as safe as they should be.

 Because of this, the government has promised to change the legislation.  By the end of the year, parliament should get an amended remote gaming act.

 Illegal gambling is a top priority
 Rosemarijn Dral, Peter Smitskam, Michiel van Nispen, Diederik van Dijk, Mikal Tseggai, Derk Boswijk, Mirjam Bikker, Marieke Wijen-Nass, and Willem Koops, all members of parliament (MPs), joined Struycken for the most recent cross-party discussion.

 The debate covered a number of topics that were brought up in writing over the past few months.  These featured research articles on "The Perspective of Dutch People on Gambling" and how raising the gaming tax will affect the public interest.

 There were also talks about current market monitoring reports in the Netherlands, research into match-fixing, a report on plans to raise gambling taxes in the country, and several studies on the need to reform the rules.

 The conversation regarding the illegal gaming sector was very robust.  This includes gambling problems in the context of suggested raising the legal age for gambling.  One study found that 13% of people who played games of chance in the last year are problem gamblers.

 The age limit issue goes on.
 With this, everyone agreed that more should be done to get rid of the illegal market.  Struycken suggested a staged approach to address worries that younger persons would go to black market platforms if the minimum age for slots was raised to 21.

 The sponsor of the new gambling law, Struycken, said that the phased approach will assist make sure that people who can now gamble on particular games may still do so legally.

 Struycken was also at the first roundtable discussion last week, where stakeholders gave their thoughts on the proposed draft.  In a February report to the industry on his plans to change gambling laws, Struycken suggested raising the minimum age.

 Bikker, the head of the Christian Union, said he was worried about raising the age restriction for gambling since it would be hard to implement the change across all types of games, such slots.  Instead, she advised that everyone who wants to gamble should be at least 21 years old. 

 Then she called the Netherlands' remote gambling law a "complete failure."  MPs Koops and Van Dijk agreed with this, saying that the rules we have now are "insufficient," which is why they need to be changed. 

 Bikker also didn't like that people from the sector were involved in talks about new laws.  She suggested that people who are connected to gaming should not be included so that the new policies don't get off track.

 Illegal gaming taking up the legitimate market
 Another topic of discussion was a report by the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), which said that the illegal market was bigger than the legal market in terms of how much money players spend.

 Dral, a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, said that illicit gambling sites should be looked at more closely because they don't safeguard gamblers well.  She talked about KSA statistics that showed gamers were moving to illegal gaming sites because authorised operators' products were getting harder to use.

 Smitskam, a member of the Party for Freedom, had similar worries.  He said that cracking down on unauthorised sites will keep gamers safe and bring in more tax money.  He also said that such measures could bring in more illegal operators to the Netherlands.

 Following this, Farmer–Citizen Movement MP Wijen-Nass said that search engines and internet service providers should do more to stop illegal activities.  She said that Google makes €20 million a year from ads for illicit internet casinos and that gamers should be told about the risks of gambling without a licence.

 Wijen-Nass also talked about the gaming tax and what the government might do to apply different rates to different types of gambling.  

 Talks are going on about a task force to deal with illegal gaming.
 The discussion on changing gambling laws in the Netherlands then led to the idea of forming a new task force to stop unlawful activity.  Dral said she liked the idea and pointed out that many trade groups had asked for this kind of approach.

 Struycken added that talks about setting up a task force were still going on, as they had been in the last meeting of stakeholders.