As the Dutch government prepares to present a periodic report covering the policies applied between 2019 and 2025, parliamentary officials are asking: are we in a position to judge the effectiveness of these policies if the main indicators of gambling-related harm have not yet been defined?
A crucial but incomplete report
The periodic report on the gambling policy framework was intended to provide a rigorous summary of the impact of the measures taken since 2019. Intended to enlighten both the Dutch Lower House (Tweede Kamer) and public opinion on the effectiveness of gambling regulation policies, this report is seen as an essential moment of assessment.
However, as soon as this project was announced, the Vaste Commissie voor Justitie en Sekurity (VJS) put eighteen pointed questions to Secretary of State Arno Rutte. The aim was to obtain clarification on the scope, method and, above all, the reliability of the information to be presented.
The political stumbling block revolves around the damage caused by gambling. This concerns not only addiction, but also the social, economic and psychological consequences that gamblers can suffer.
Arno Rutte, State Secretary for Justice and Security :
‘It is expected that, for many aspects of policy, sufficient information will be available to be able to issue guiding opinions on the policy being pursued. At the same time, not all the information required for this periodic report will be available while the study is being carried out. Indicators on gambling-related harm, for example, are not expected to be available in time. This is why the researchers responsible for the periodic report have been asked to identify the areas in which additional indicators are needed in order to be able to fully assess effectiveness and efficiency.’
In his view, the indicators needed to measure this damage reliably will not be available in time to fully integrate the planned report.
Indicators under construction
To address this shortcoming, Expertisecentrum Gokken (Gaming Expertise Centre) has been asked to develop additional indicators to quantify gambling-related harm. The authorities hope that these tools will be finalised by the end of 2026, providing greater analytical capacity for future assessments.
At this stage, traditional indicators such as the rate of channelling to legal operators and data from health services specialising in gambling addiction remain available for analysis. However, these data alone may not be sufficient to capture all the dimensions of the phenomenon.
An assessment extended beyond online gambling
Another important point raised by the parliamentarians concerns the scope of the report itself. Contrary to what some might think, the periodic report is not limited to online gambling. It covers all aspects of gambling policy, including physical gambling, the fight against illegal gambling, the prevention of related crime and the links between gambling and deviant behaviour.
When asked about the relationship between these sub-themes – such as the prevention of re-offending, youth, screening and forensics – the secretariat explained that each theme requires its own political theory to be properly evaluated. It is therefore neither possible nor desirable to propose a single global approach for all the topics.
Old vs. new policy framework
MEPs wanted to know how the next periodic report would compare the old guidelines (2011-2025) with the new policy framework initiated in 2025. In his reply, the Secretary of State said that it would be possible to reconstruct the political theory of the previous regime on the basis of previous documents, and then compare it with the new rationale.
In practice, this means superimposing the objectives, hypotheses and presumed results in the same analytical space – a delicate operation, but essential for discerning the relative effectiveness of the two approaches. The possible use of matrices or comparative tables has also been envisaged to clarify these structural links.
With MEPs anticipating publication of the report in 2026, the debate surrounding the missing indicators illustrates a tension between political ambition and analytical capacity. The periodic report remains an indispensable tool for evaluating gambling legislation, but it should be read with caution, bearing in mind its current methodological limitations.