A presidential decree has installed Pascal Chevremont at the head of France's gambling regulator, closing a contested confirmation that cleared the National Assembly by a single vote. He inherits a mandate framed around the fight against the illegal market and the protection of vulnerable players.
A presidential decree has installed Pascal Chevremont at the head of France's gambling regulator, closing a contested confirmation that cleared the National Assembly by a single vote. He inherits a mandate framed around the fight against the illegal market and the protection of vulnerable players.
Pascal Chevremont has been confirmed as president of the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), France's gambling regulator, under a presidential decree dated 22 June 2026. The decree closes a nomination process that opened when the Élysée announced his candidacy on 28 May and then passed through finance-committee hearings in the National Assembly and the Senate. He takes over from Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who led the authority from its inception.
The confirmation was far from unanimous. According to the parliamentary record, the hearings on 17 June produced a 19-18 vote in Chevremont's favour in the National Assembly and a more comfortable 12-3 margin in the Senate. The single-vote result in the lower chamber has been read by French trade coverage as a sign of unease among legislators rather than a ringing endorsement. The nomination itself was put forward on the recommendation of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
Chevremont succeeds a figure closely associated with the ANJ's creation. Falque-Pierrotin served as the regulator's first president under a six-year mandate that is not renewable, and her departure marks the end of the authority's founding chapter. Her tenure established the ANJ as the supervisor of France's licensed gambling market, and her successor inherits both that institutional footing and the expectations attached to it.
In his early public positioning, Chevremont has pointed to two priorities above others: combating the illegal and unlicensed offer that competes with France's regulated operators, and strengthening protections for players at risk of harm. Neither theme is new to the ANJ, but the emphasis signals continuity with the regulator's stated direction rather than a change of course.
The One-Vote Assembly Margin Is Both a Mandate and a Warning
The most striking feature of this appointment is not that Chevremont got the job but how narrowly parliament let him have it. A 19-18 result in the National Assembly is a mandate in the technical sense and a caution in every other. It tells the new president that a meaningful bloc of legislators had reservations, whether about him specifically or about the ANJ's trajectory, and that he will need to build support he cannot assume he already has. The steadier 12-3 Senate vote softens the picture without erasing it. For a regulator whose credibility rests on being seen as above the political fray, beginning a term on the thinnest possible legislative margin is an awkward, if survivable, starting position.
Naming the Illegal Market First Tells You Where the ANJ Is Heading
That Chevremont has led with channelisation, the fight to keep gambling activity inside the licensed market, is the clearest signal of intent available this early. France has long argued that its regulated operators are undercut by offshore and unlicensed sites that face neither its taxes nor its player-protection rules, and a president who names that problem first is setting the metric by which he expects to be judged. The tension he now has to manage is the familiar one: measures that squeeze the licensed market in the name of protecting players can push the most engaged customers toward the very offshore sites the regulator cannot reach. Placing the illegal offer and player protection side by side as joint priorities is the right framing. Delivering on both at once is the harder task, and it is the one that will define whether this contested appointment is remembered as a safe pair of hands or a missed opportunity.
