Germany’s gambling regulator, the Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL), has taken its first concrete step toward closer federal coordination by opening talks with the country’s addiction commissioner. The end goal is to develop a more unified national approach.
Targeting Global Threats with Domestic Tools
Last week, Ronald Benter, head of the GGL, met with Prof. Dr. Hendrik Streeck, the Federal Commissioner for Drugs and Addiction. The conversation focused on the need for more cooperation, while laying bare the pressures on the country’s gambling system, ranging from addiction and enforcement gaps to competition from offshore operators.
The GGL currently runs on a three-part model that covers prevention, enforcement against illegal operators, and compliance checks on licensed platforms.
However, foreign-based gambling sites continue to operate largely unchecked, exploiting a legal gray area that leaves regulators with limited tools. There are ongoing discussions about whether the Criminal Code should be updated to allow stronger action against offshore platforms targeting German players.
Until then, authorities are effectively chasing an international market with largely domestic rules.
Meanwhile, gambling addiction remains a serious and under-measured problem. Estimates suggest around 1.4 million adults in Germany struggle with gambling addiction, with another 3.5 million considered at risk, and roughly 350,000 self-excluded players.
Even more disturbing, approximately 600,000 children are thought to live in households affected by a parent’s gambling disorder. Yet the European country still lacks a nationwide system for consistently tracking harm, and policymakers cannot fully distinguish between the impacts of licensed and illegal operators.
That means key regulatory decisions are being made with an incomplete picture of the issue.
Upcoming Review of the Interstate Gambling Treaty
All of this is coming to a head ahead of the 2026 deadline for the first full review of the Interstate Gambling Treaty 2021, the legislation that reshaped online gambling across Germany.
The treaty set strict limits on stakes and deposits and imposed advertising rules to protect players, measures that strengthened safeguards while also cutting competition among legal platforms and making more room for illegal sites to thrive.
The upcoming review will therefore have to establish whether the current balance can be corrected or if parts of the framework need a major overhaul.