The Vice-Presidency of the Government and the Ministry of Energy Transition, Productive Sectors and Democratic Memory convened the Gambling Commission of the Balearic Islands this Tuesday to present the latest draft of the bill to reform Law 8/2014, of 1 August, on Gambling and Betting in the Balearic Islands.

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The Commission, which brings together all the sector’s associations and trade unions, has received, from the Director General of Trade, Miquel Piñol, the latest version of the proposal to amend the Balearic gambling law, which includes the recommendations of the Economic and Social Council (CES) of the Balearic Islands.

This is the last step before starting the European procedures prior to its entry into the Balearic Parliament.

The most important new features resulting from these incorporations include the limitation of the minimum distance between gambling halls in the municipality of Palma to 500 m; the extension of the ban on placing gaming machines in the vicinity of educational centres for minors to all types of educational centres, regardless of the age of the people they are aimed at; and the extension of the statute of limitations period for minor offences from six months to one year.

On the other hand, with the incorporation of the latest contributions, the obligation to establish activation and deactivation systems in type B machines will be eliminated, although the machine will have to be kept in standby with an age verification screen, and it will be permitted to indicate the commercial name and brand of the establishment on the façades of gambling halls, bingos, casinos or betting shops.

The Balearic Islands will be the first autonomous community not to grant any more gambling licences.

The Balearic Government’s proposal to modify the gambling law will set a maximum of 75 gambling halls per million inhabitants – we are now starting from 140 halls – and includes an automatic moratorium on new licences until this figure is reached, i.e. until the current number of gambling and betting halls is not reduced by half.

Last April, the vice-president and minister Juan Pedro Yllanes announced this measure with which the government ensures that no more gambling licences will be granted on the islands in the coming decades. The Balearic Islands thus become the first autonomous community in Spain to prevent, de facto, the opening of new gambling halls and betting shops.

“The modification of the gambling law responds to the demands of civil society who, in recent years, have expressed their concern about the proliferation of gambling and the need to adopt new regulatory frameworks to curb excessive growth,” explained Miquel Piñol, who also recalled some of the measures adopted by the Government to date, such as the first moratorium on new licences between 2020 and 2022, which made it possible to halt a dynamic of unlimited openings, or the suspension of licences at the end of the moratorium, with the aim of consolidating the replanning of the sector, delayed by the economic and social impact of the effects of the pandemic.

Piñol also insisted on the Government’s commitment “to policies for the prevention of addictions, the protection of our minors and most vulnerable groups, social peace and neighbourhood coexistence”.

The Government of the Balearic Islands considers gambling from an integral perspective of social responsibility and as a complex phenomenon that must combine preventive actions, awareness-raising, and control and reparation of the negative effects that may arise from it.