Junta de Andalucía and Government Finalize the Signing of an Agreement to Strengthen Protection Against Gambling Addiction

SPAIN (January 8, 2024) — The Junta de Andalucía and the central government will join forces to reinforce protection and prevention measures against gambling addiction. With this objective, the Ministry of Economy, Finance and European Funds, which has assumed powers in matters of Gambling, and the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 are finalizing the signing of an agreement that will allow the exchange of information between state registries. and regional prohibitions on access to gambling, with the aim of reinforcing prevention and protection measures against gambling addiction.

This is indicated in a press release, which explains that the records of prohibitions on access to games are instruments intended to collect the necessary information to make effective the right of citizens who have requested it to be prohibited from accessing the games. gaming premises and activities, as a measure of protection against the addiction that gambling addiction entails.

Registration in a prohibited register prevents the registered person from accessing those establishments for which the corresponding public administration has determined the need to carry out prior identification of the player. These records include those who request it voluntarily, those requested by the establishment or people incapacitated by a final court ruling.

The objective of this agreement, which will be signed by the Minister of Economy, Finance and European Funds, Carolina España, and the Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy, is to establish a collaboration mechanism between the corresponding records of access prohibitions to the game – also known as self-prohibited registers – at the state and Andalusian level, which allows the mutual recognition of the registrations made in each of them in favor of an “optimal protection model” for users.

In this way, sufficient and effective instruments will be available to make participation in online games impossible or prevent access to gaming establishments located outside Andalusia that have access control that requires the identification of participants and the people listed in the Andalusian record. And it will also work in the opposite direction: people who appear in the state General Registry of Gambling Access Bans (Rgiaj) will not be able to access establishments of this type that exist in Andalusia.

The agreement, which will be signed for an initial extendable period of four years, is a consequence of the agreement of the Gaming Policy Council, the body for cooperation, participation and coordination of the central administration and the autonomous communities in matters of gaming, on July 14. of 2021 to promote closer cooperation between state and regional prohibition registries, based on the “interconnection of the prohibition registries of all public actors involved in the regulation and supervision of gambling activities and in the protection of groups vulnerable”, as stated in the clauses of the agreement.

The signing of the agreement implies the “mutual recognition of the registrations, modifications and cancellations carried out by the gaming authorities” that have decided to join and enables the possibility of transferring the registrations in the regional records and vice versa.

The data of those registered in the prohibited registers will be processed in accordance with national and European legislation relating to the protection of data of natural persons and their processing. In fact, the signatory parties undertake to maintain secrecy regarding the data provided and to treat it confidentially, for which they will adopt the necessary measures.

SOURCE: cope