Riga City Council accepts extensive gambling restrictions that will close all the currently known gaming hall / day
Representatives of the municipality have acknowledged that all the currently known gambling medicines are located in one of the areas where gambling will be prohibited, so the new binding regulations will provide for the conclusion of all the gambling medicines currently in Riga.
The binding rules provide for a ban on gambling to organize educational institutions, railway stations, bus station, airport and elsewhere.
Unlike predicted restrictions prohibiting the organization of gambling throughout the city, with the exception of four and five -star hotels, the new rules set different places and areas in Riga where gambling will not be allowed.
The rules are based on the recommendations of the Constitutional Court and taking into account the results of the public consultation in February this year.
The draft regulation stipulates that gambling will not be allowed to organize municipal real estate, neighborhood centers, educational areas and 300 meters from them, at railway stations, bus stations, airports and passenger ports and 500 meters from them, 300 meters from public transport stops.
Similarly, gambling will not be organized in the Riga Spatial Planning Plan, low -rise and multi -storey residential buildings and 300 meters from the boundaries of these functional areas, as well as in cultural monuments and their territories, their protection zones and Riga spatial plan.
The municipality explains that the restrictions provided for the entire municipal territory, as well as the right of merchants to open and/or expand the organization of gambling in four and five -star hotels.
The application of new restrictions is a transitional period – five years from the decision of the municipality to annul the previously issued permits.
Previously, at the committee meetings, there were currently 76 gambling sites in Riga. When the binding rules come into force, each gambling site will have to be assessed with the new rules and the decision will have to be taken for each gambling site.
In Latvia, the Gambling Association has already announced that it is highly likely to challenge the new restrictions to the Constitutional Court, because they believe that they « are neither proportionate nor legal ».
This is another Riga City Council’s big attempt in the capital to actually close the gaming halls. At one time, the City Council had already decided to prohibit the organization of gambling and providing gambling services throughout Riga’s administrative territory, except if these gambling organization locations are in four or five -star hotels, but in April 2024 the Constitutional Court lifted these restrictions as insufficiently justified.
Already six years ago, the Riga City Council decided to eliminate 42 gaming halls in the capital, located in the historic center of Riga and in its protection zone. The exception was for four and five -star hotels.
In order to close the gaming hall in the rest of the city, the Riga Municipality provided for this possibility in the spatial plan adopted in 2021. The plan was temporarily suspended by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, thus delaying the closure of gambling sites, but this decision was later abolished and the Riga City Council in the autumn of 2023 decided to cancel 139 permits for gambling sites outside the city center.
However, from the Gambling Organizers, claims were filed again at the Constitutional Court, which acknowledged that the restriction set out throughout Riga territory to organize gambling does not comply with the Satversme. In its judgment, the court called on the municipality to justify specific places or territories with specific characteristics that make it unsuitable for gambling.
