Over €6m in lottery winnings unclaimed

A total of €6.7m in National Lottery winnings went unclaimed last year, an increase of nearly €1m in the space of two years, the SudPresse newspapers report today. However, only a very small number of major winnings were left undistributed, the National Lottery insists. Winners have a legal period of 20 weeks to claim their winnings, except in exceptional cases, but the National Lottery does not take any proactive measures to identify them and to urge them to come forward. The unclaimed winnings come mostly from Lotto (€2.56m) and Euro Millions (€3.5m). These total figure of €6.7m only concerns draw games, since the National Lottery has no figures for scratchcards. "The unclaimed amounts are actually quite marginal compared to the total earnings, especially when you know that the lottery distributes between €650m and €700m every year," a spokesman said.