Love thy neighbour: Should Austria follow Germany’s regulatory lead?

When Austria’s Federal Ministry of Finance circulated its draft amendment to the Gambling Act (Glücksspielgesetz) in mid-2026, it became apparent that its authors had been looking very closely across the border at their western neighbour. Austria’s lawmakers have often been fond of looking to Germany for guidance: the new gambling regulation is no different. Germany had, after all, just been through exactly this transition from an online gambling monopoly to an open licence framework.

The Austrian reform is not least a consequence of the recognition that the monopoly offering failed to achieve adequate channelling despite its exclusive position. It is very much to be welcomed that this monopoly is being phased out, as it clearly has not proven effective.

The decisive question, however, is not what Austria is borrowing from Germany, but whether it is borrowing the right things.

What Austria got right: The architecture

Let’s start with the positives, because there are real ones. The draft introduces two landmark cross-operator systems: a central exclusion register (Sperr-Register) covering all licensed operators, and a separate Online Gambling Supervision System functioning as a cross-operator deposit limit register (Limit-Register). This is the architecture that serious regulators build. Germany’s equivalent, the Limit-Datei under Sec 6c Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021 (‘Glücksspielstaatvertrag 2021), caps the default cross-operator monthly deposit at €1,000 ($1,150) and has been broadly operational since the Interstate Treaty came into force. Austria is following this structural logic, and that is the right call

A mandatory access and identification system, staff training on problem gambling, a tiered warning system from player information to account bans, and mandatory self-limitation covering monetary and time-based maximums per day, week and month round out a player protection framework that is meaningfully robust on paper. These elements, modelled on the German example, are to be welcomed without reservation.

Further good adoptions: the draft also creates a dedicated supervisory authority, mandates a safe-server giving the regulator real-time access to all gaming transactions and introduces a genuine multi-licence system for online gambling with an unlimited number of licences. That is a significant liberalisation and, on channelling grounds, it is the right starting point.

The central benchmark: Channelisation

Here is where the analysis needs to go into greater detail. Player protection instruments, e.g. deposit limits, exclusion registers and cooling-off periods, have zero effect on players who have migrated to unlicensed platforms.

The cooling-off issue: Quite different from the German approach

Under Sec 14 para 2a Z 3 of the draft, operators seeking an online gambling licence must have ceased offering unlicensed services in Austria by 1 January 2027, failing which they face a lock-out of 18 months, extended to 24 months for withdrawals after 31 December 2029.

At first glance, this appears logical. But the mechanism is fatally flawed in practice. Austrian law does not fix a date by which the first online licences will actually be issued. The existing monopoly licence expires in September 2027, but nothing guarantees new licences will be ready at that moment. Germany’s experience shows that licensing procedures at the outset of a young and new regulatory system can run for many months, sometimes even years. Players who do not have access to operators that already hold a valid Austrian licence will largely turn to other operators that they find on the black market.

The comparative evidence is instructive. When Denmark transitioned to an open licence system in 2012, there was no mandatory market exit. Applicants could file before opening day and trade legally from day one, with channelling rates eventually exceeding 90%. The Netherlands defined workable rules of conduct for a seamless transition into its market opening on 1 October 2021. Finland explicitly avoided any mandatory pre-exit phase in its current transition. Even Germany recognised the importance of a smooth transition into the new regime, using a transitional period that required unlicensed operators to bring their offerings into advance conformity with future licence conditions. Austria, as things stand, would go further than all: a fixed exit date with the re-entry date left entirely open. That can only end badly.

My esteemed Austrian colleague Dr Christian Rapani addressed this with great acuity in a statement to the Federal Ministry of Finance in Vienna as early as July 2026. His proposed solution is straightforward: cooling-off and the lock-out period should function as a sanction for a lack of willingness to engage with regulation but not as a precondition for that willingness. The mechanism should be linked to the date from which licence applications can actually be submitted. Operators who submit their applications without delay may continue offering their products until the regulator has reached a decision; those who do not will be excluded from the market. This preserves the effectiveness of the instrument and closes the gap in regulatory control. One could not put it more appropriately.

Rigid deposit limits: Pushing high-stakes players to the black market

The Austrian draft sets a hard statutory deposit limit of € 1,680 per month for players aged 26 and over, and €250 per week for players under 26. The problem here is rather structural. A recreational player who wagers €50 per session is entirely served by this limit. A higher-frequency player, not necessarily a problem gambler, simply a more engaged one, hits the ceiling well before month-end. At that point, the licensed platform is simply unavailable. The unlicensed one is not. 

The Interstate Treaty 2021 sets its standard cross-operator limit even lower, at €1,000. Under graduated statutory conditions it can be raised for individual players to a maximum of € 30,000. German market developments since 2021 are nonetheless no channelling success story. The one-size-fits-all deposit limit shuts out high-stakes players. 

That goes without saying. According to the monitoring report for spring 2026 by the Dutch gambling regulator, the Kansspelautoriteit, depending on the calculation method used, around 91% to 95% of Dutch players gamble exclusively with licensed operators. However, measured in terms of gross gaming revenue (criterion: money), the channelling rate stands at only 53%. This is a clear indication that looking solely at the number of players is not sufficient.

The Austrian proposal allows players aged 23 and over to apply for a higher limit, provided there are no signs of risk and additional monitoring measures have been put in place, which essentially follows the same logic of individual assessment as in Germany. Rather than rigid statutory figures, the better approach would be to equip the new gambling authority with the flexibility to adjust deposit thresholds at regular review intervals. 

Germany’s track record: A cautionary tale

The Interstate Treaty 2021 was designed with good intentions: channelling the population’s natural gambling instinct into orderly frameworks and countering black-market growth. Four years in, the honest verdict is that the framework has fallen significantly short. The combination of a monthly cap of €1,000, a minimum spin duration on slot machines that is too long for many players, bonus restrictions, a lengthy individual pre-approval process for each individual game title, and a sports betting offering that is hardly competitive has meant that the licensed German market is structurally less attractive to large groups of players than offshore alternatives. 

The devil is often in the detail. The centralised pre-approval process in which the supervisory authority GGL must clear each individual game before it can be offered has produced lengthy processing times, bottlenecks and significant administrative burden. In Germany’s current evaluation phase, the findings will in all likelihood drive a shift towards certification by accredited laboratories or white-list solutions. Austria should not wait to draw the same conclusion. Third-party certification by internationally accredited testing laboratories achieves the same safety objectives at a fraction of the cost and without delay.

The bottom line

Austria’s Glücksspielgesetz 2026 draft is not a bad piece of legislation. The cross-operator limit register, the exclusion database, the mandatory player protection infrastructure, and the move to an open multi-licence framework are all architecturally correct. The goal of combining a competitive market with effective player protection is the right one.

However, the arguments against the ‘channelling’ approach, both in relation to the cooling-off mechanism as currently designed and to the rigid deposit limit structure, are compelling and by no means hypothetical.  ‘Channelling’ is not an additional optional element of gambling regulation: rather, it is the fundamental prerequisite on which all other regulatory objectives depend.

Austria has the advantage of going second. It should use it not to replicate the German framework wholesale, but to take what works structurally, fix what demonstrably has not, and build a licensed market that is genuinely competitive with the unlicensed alternative. That is the only version of this reform that actually protects players.