Key Points
- Romania’s gambling regulator has changed the team working on the country’s gambling laws, but they’re not saying whether it’ll be a complete overhaul or a tweak to the existing ones.
- Auditors said there might be billions of lei worth of hidden fees, but all they could officially confirm was RON 78.86 million.
- A 5 million euro addiction prevention fund set up by the old team is also under the microscope.
Who Is Going To Be Writing Romania’s New Gambling Rules?
Romania’s gambling regulator has dumped the team working on the country’s gambling laws, but more than 10 weeks after taking over the top job, president Valentin-Ioan Tomescu still hasn’t spilt the beans on who’s in the new team. The announcement promises a brand new set of rules, but still no draft, no rough timeline, and no list of laws that are going to be changed.
They are also looking at that 5 million euro addiction prevention fund that the old team set up. And that’s got a lot of people wondering in the industry: will the review actually tackle the problems that auditors picked up on, or is this just a case of the new regime shaking things up for the sake of it?
The National Gambling Office (ONJN) reckon this is a step towards reforming the whole legislative framework that governs the gambling market, and they reckon that the old way of constantly changing the rules every time something goes wrong just isn’t cutting it anymore.
A Review That’s Going To Bring About Change, But Just What Kind?
ONJN says they want a fresh approach that gets rid of all the old, outdated rules and tidies up the whole mess. But the announcement doesn’t even hint at what that might look like. They won’t say whether they are planning to bring in a brand new gambling act or if they’re just going to make a load of changes to the existing ones.
Trade reports are hinting that licensing, taxation and supervision might all be on the table for an overhaul, but the regulator hasn’t said anything specific. They do say they’re fed up with the way the existing rules are all over the shop and can’t possibly be any more fragmented, but they haven’t said who is actually going to make the changes, or when they will happen.
The main law that governs the whole shebang is Emergency Ordinance 77/2009, which was originally passed, with some changes, as Law 246/2010. Since then it’s been changed loads of times.
ONJN actually started life a bit later, under Emergency Ordinance 20/2013. And in recent years there have been changes like Law 141/2025, which tweaked the financial side of things for online operators. Then there was Emergency Ordinance 7/2026 which gave local councils a bit more control over land-based venues.
Each change just added more layers to the original rules, making them a bit more confusing. ONJN reckon it’s time to sort that out, but they haven’t said how yet.
No Names, Draft Or Timetable
ONJN has yet to disclose the identities of the members of the drafting group. It has also yet to disclose which laws will be prioritised for the review process and the date of availability of the first draft.
Law 52/2003 stipulates that the draft legislation must be disclosed at least 30 days prior to its adoption. That gives a minimal timeframe for consultations; however, it still does not disclose when ONJN intends to start the process.
It will be important for the industry to get familiar with the composition of the drafting group, the first draft and the consulting period, which will allow for the assessment of the process.
Without the knowledge of the identities of the members, operators will not be aware of whom will be consulted and which views of the industry will be presented.
The Findings Of The Audit
These amendments were suggested following an audit conducted by the Court of Accounts for the 2019–2023 period. The report came out on 21 February 2025. While the first headlines mentioned hundreds of millions of lei of missing taxes, the language used in the audit was different.
The auditors stated that the RTP rates declared by the operators were never checked by ONJN. In case there was a difference between actual rates and those declared, it would mean the operators generated higher revenue and, therefore, paid fewer authorisation fees.
According to the Court, the total potential difference in undeclared fees for 2023 could reach RON 1.8 billion. The total potential difference for 2022 amounted to RON 1.2 billion, while smaller values were detected for 2019–2021.
That means that the amounts specified above reflect the potential losses from a risk that was never checked by ONJN. However, it does not mean that the amounts were lost in reality in the form of taxes.
Formally, the losses revealed by the auditors were much smaller. The auditors found undeclared fees for 2022 and 2023 of RON 78.86 million. The interest and penalties for these fees amounted to RON 37.18 million as of 20 December 2024.
Following the audit, ONJN clarified that the difference of RON 116 million in slot machine licensing fees was caused by a legal dispute, and not fraud. It will be possible for supporters of the legislative review to use this example in their arguments.
New Leader For ONJN Following Some Pretty Hasty Departures
Vlad Cristian Soare had held down the top job at ONJN since April 2025, just a bit over a year and a half, when suddenly he was removed as president on August 21st 2026, with Decision No. 283/2026. Decision No.284/2026 promptly installed Tomescu in his place. However, all they’d say as to why Soare got the boot is that he was gone. No mention of any misdeed or investigation.
Later on, Soare himself said he had been told to pack his bags without any explanation at all. He linked the whole thing to an anti-corruption case that had ONJN staff in the frame. But neither Soare nor thePM’ss office would confirm whether that was actually the reason for Soare’s sudden dismissal.
As soon as Tomescu got in, he conducted a review and found out that with the staff levels they’d got, they weren’t even close to being able to do all their job properly. He said it was a pretty big problem that needed sorting, some things would take a bit longer to sort out.
Some Ongoing Reforms Still Yet To Get Done
On August 14th, ONJN did a bit of a status update and said they were still working on several of the changes they’d announced. They’d started working on some pretty big projects, like checking all their books for the past 5 years and trying to get some online operators to cough up cash that was owed. They were also looking into whether some online operators had been fiddling with their accounts.
ONJN have been working on putting in a system to analyse the data operators are handing over in near real time with the Digital Authority. Their self-exclusion system is still not up to scratch either. They signed an IT deal with ICI Bucharest back in February 2026, but they’re still waiting for the green light to get the new system fully up and running with all the online operators. It all depends on whether they get this proposed emergency ordinance agreed.
Oh and it’s worth mentioning that the €5 million addiction prevention fund ‘Aware and Free’ has been sent for review. Soare had put it forward as the first of its kind, a programme funded by ONJN that helped people with addiction. It was announced back in April but now it’s under review. Some questions have been raised about whether the original budget accounted for a whopping RON 25.4 million and whether ONJN was even allowed to fund external projects using its own cash.
So, as it stands, there’s no news on whether the contracts for these external projects got signed, the reports that have been seen so far just confirm that either the contracts weren’t signed or payments weren’t made by July 31st.
What Operators And Players Can Realistically Expect
Operators shouldn’t be thinking they can just put things on hold and carry on as normal, the final decision on gambling laws could mean big changes to licensing procedures, reporting requirements and penalties. They could also go for the option of just tweaking the existing legislation, which would mean a lot less upheaval. But until ONJN comes out and gives us a clue on which way they’re going to jump, it’s hard to say what will actually happen.
Players are more likely to notice the changes when they try to get a payout or a disputed bonus, they’ll get a say on the proposed rules and can even put their point of view forward with some evidence.
Expert Analysis: Get The Regulator Straightened Out First, Then Change The Law
It seems unlikely that passing a new law needs to be ONJN’s immediate task. The main criticism of the regulator by the Court of Accounts was the lack of controls on information declared by operators. This looks like a failure in supervision, not the wording of the law itself.
Those who advocate the review do have a valid point. The case of the discrepancy worth RON 116 million in fees collected from operators illustrates perfectly how vague wording of legal acts leads to financial disagreements. Improved legislation would probably help in this situation.
However, the regulator itself acknowledges that it does not have enough employees to perform its statutory functions. It also notes that its system of real-time control is still being designed. Adding more complex regulations to its responsibilities without solving these issues might put ONJN under scrutiny again during the next audit.
The time span between the two most recent events is worth being noted by the gambling industry as well. In less than a month, ONJN started to investigate the previous management about the addiction-prevention fund and replaced the drafting group for gambling legislation. While these steps might be a part of the regular activities of a new president, there is no evidence of any connection between them yet.
Our stance is simple: ONJN needs to announce the names of the drafting group, give a timeframe and say whether Romania will have a new gambling law or amendments to the existing one. Without that, the industry has no idea who writes the legislation and what it includes.
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