Bosnia Struggles to Tighten Gambling Regulations

While many politicians and experts say Bosnia needs to tighten up its gambling regulations, reform is proving difficult to get through parliament.

A betting shop in Bosnia capital city, Sarajevo | Photo: BIRN

Bosnia has no an effective gambling law, despite having the highest registered number of betting shops per resident in Europe.

“We aren’t satisfied by the current regulation,” Nermana Mehic-Basara, a neuropsychiatrist and director the Public Institute for Addiction Diseases in Sarajevo, told BIRN on Thursday.

Current legislation is unsatisfactory when it comes to preventing the gambling addiction and the establishment of programs to treat people who suffer from it, which is becoming more common in Bosnia, Mehic-Basara stressed.

Politicians from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two entities of Bosnia, increasingly say the topic should be better regulated also from the fiscal point of view.

Denis Gratz, president of the civic party Our Party [Nasa Stranka] and member of the House of Representatives in the Federation, told BIRN that taxes on gambling should rise.

“Betting shops in the Federation pay no tax on wins under 100 KM [around 50 euros],” Gratz said, adding that this should change.

He also said the law should increase the minimum distance between schools and betting points, which is currently only 100 meters.

Reform of gambling legislation is needed also because betting is becoming one of the most popular activities in the country, as Bosnia is the European country with the highest number of registered betting shops per resident.

In Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity, 15 companies operate 756 betting shops; while in the Federation 13 companies operate 2,443 shops, television N1 reported.

Given that Bosnia’s population is around 3.8 million, it means the country has one betting shop for every 1,000 persons.

In the RS, betting companies need to pay the entity’s tax administration a fixed sum of 500 euros for every betting shop they own in the entity, Radio Slobodna Evropa reported.

In the Federation, representatives of the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, on Tuesday proposed a new law introducing a 10-per-cent tax on wins under 100 KM.

Estimates say it would bring 23 million euros more to the entity budget per year. However, it was eventually discarded under opposition from the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZBiH.

Media reports say the HDZBiH opposed the reform because it would oblige betting shops to pay the new tax in the place where the bet is placed, instead of where the agency has its legal base.

Although most betting companies in the Federation have their legal seat in Cantons governed by the HDZBiH, most betting shops are concentrated in the territory of Sarajevo and in Tuzla Canton, according to the entity’s Fiscal Administration Bureau.

Members of the HDZBiH denied that this was the main reason for opposing the law and claimed that the SDA proposal was just an electoral move.

“This proposal is not acceptable in a pre-election period,” Lidija Bradara, from the HDZBiH, told Bosnia’s FENA agency on Thursday.

Amir Zukic, one of the SDA members who authored the draft, said that his party would not abandon the idea of reforming the law.

“The SDA will seek … to change this law and obtain adequate fiscal treatment [for betting shops]”, Zukic said after the reform was rejected on Tuesday.