Swiss vote to block foreign-based gambling sites

GENEVA: Swiss voters have overwhelmingly given the green light to block foreign-based betting sites in a high-stakes referendum on a new gambling law designed to prevent addiction, according to preliminary results.

A full 72 percent of voters have cast their ballots in favour of the new gambling law, according to projections from the gfs.bern polling institute based on final results from several Swiss cantons and partial results from others.

That spells a crushing defeat for the opponents who gathered the 50,000 signatures needed to put a law change to a referendum, and who claim it amounts to internet censorship. The Swiss government meanwhile says the Gambling Act, which has already been passed by both houses of parliament, updates legislation for the digital age, while raising protections against addiction.

The law, which is set to take effect next year, will be among the strictest in Europe, allowing only casinos and gaming companies certified in Switzerland to operate in the country, including on the internet. It will enable Swiss companies for the first time to offer online gambling, but will basically block foreign-based companies from the market.

This aspect of the law in particular spurred a coalition, made up primarily of the youth wings of various political parties, to launch the referendum. Opponents have slammed Bern for employing "methods worthy of an authoritarian state", with a measure that they claim is "censorship of the internet."

"This sets a very dangerous precedent," Luzian Franzini, co-president of The Greens´ youth wing and head of the campaign against the new law, told AFP before the vote. Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga, however, insists that allowing only Swiss-based companies to sell gambling services is "indispensable" to ensure that everyone adheres to strict rules, like blocking known addicts.

According to Addiction Switzerland, some 75,000 people in the small Alpine nation of 8.3 million inhabitants suffer from gaming addiction, costing the society more than half a billion Swiss francs (half a billion dollars) annually.

Bern also wants all of the companies' proceeds to be taxed in Switzerland, with revenues helping fund anti-addiction measures, as well as social security and sports and culture programmes.

According to the government, Swiss gamblers spend around 250 million Swiss francs annually on unregulated betting sites abroad that pay nothing into public coffers. Sommaruga has said that the new gambling law would "allow us to stop this hemorrhaging." According to GREA, an association that studies addiction, Swiss gambling and betting companies pulled in nearly 1.7 billion Swiss francs in 2016, of which more than half went to "the public good".