Romania’s ONJN details first-year results under President Soare
- Romania’s National Office for Gambling has published a first-year activity report under President Vlad-Cristian Soare, covering 25 April 2025 to 25 April 2026.
- The regulator recorded 11,000 control actions, imposed approximately 10,000,000 lei in fines, revoked 60 licences and filed 70 criminal complaints during the period.
- A €5m responsible gambling fund and a public register of gaming devices were among the headline deliverables of the mandate’s first twelve months.
Romania’s gambling regulator, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN), has published a comprehensive activity report marking the first year of Vlad-Cristian Soare’s presidency, detailing the enforcement figures, legislative reforms and digitalisation projects delivered between 25 April 2025 and 25 April 2026.
Soare took office following the resignation of his predecessor amid sustained criticism over a series of audit failures that left close to €1bn in tax and authorisation revenue uncollected.
The report positions the twelve-month period as a transition from institutional stagnation to active regulatory reform.
Enforcement and control
The figures published in the report reflect a significant increase in control activity across both land-based and online gambling. ONJN conducted approximately 11,000 control actions, resulting in around 10,000,000 lei in fines.
The breakdown included roughly 7,000 actions against land-based operators, 3,500 against remote gambling organisers, and 500 involving other economic operators and individuals.
60 licences were revoked, 260 gaming devices were disabled or confiscated, and 70 criminal complaints were filed. A further 270 proposal notes were submitted to the sanctions committee.
The enforcement campaign extended well beyond routine inspections. In September 2025, ONJN conducted simultaneous raids across multiple gaming venues without prior notice, targeting self-exclusion compliance and the presence of minors on premises.
On the online black market, Law No. 141/2025 granted ONJN the authority to issue removal orders for illegal content hosted on platforms including Google, Meta and TikTok. More than 60 such orders were issued during the period, with a reported compliance rate of 98%.
Over 300 unlicensed gambling websites were added to the national blacklist, including prediction market platform Polymarket, which was blacklisted for operating without a Romanian licence.
A subsequent court challenge by Polymarket was rejected in April 2026, confirming the legality of the regulator’s enforcement action. At the moment of the present article, the platform remains unavailable in Romania.
The same legislation also requires class II operators to submit monthly reports on attempts by Romanian users to access unlicensed platforms, while transferring certain enforcement powers directly to the Romanian Police.
Separately, ONJN launched investigations into the manipulation of gross gaming revenue and declared taxes by several operators, with mirror server analysis reportedly uncovering suspicious win patterns designed to suppress taxable revenue.
Transparency and player protection
A public register of gaming devices was launched during the year, described in the report as a two-year overdue instrument and the first cloud-native application hosted within Romania’s Government Private Cloud.
Each device is now assigned a QR code issued by ONJN, linked directly to its registry entry, and fitted with mandatory geolocation to verify operation at its declared location.
On self-exclusion, the regulator inherited a backlog of more than 30,000 unprocessed requests and a system that largely existed only in theory. A formal operational procedure was introduced and a functional system implemented, bringing the total number of self-excluded individuals to 54,000 by the end of the reporting period.
A draft Emergency Ordinance submitted to the Ministry of Finance in January 2026 seeks to unify the currently fragmented self-exclusion framework into a single procedure covering both online and land-based operators, administered exclusively by ONJN.
Proposed measures include fixed exclusion periods, a mandatory cooling-off window during which self-exclusion cannot be reversed, compulsory player refunds where operators breach exclusion obligations, and fines of up to 100,000 lei, alongside potential licence suspension.
At the time of publication, the ordinance had secured the necessary approvals and was awaiting inclusion on the government’s legislative agenda.
The “Aware and Free” programme marked the first time in ONJN’s history that responsible gambling funds were allocated through a structured grant framework.
The €5m allocation, confirmed in the state budget, covers three funding streams: prevention and protection programmes for NGOs, infrastructure development for public addiction treatment centres, and research initiatives. The implementation period will run from August to December 2026.
Digitalisation agenda
The report acknowledges that ONJN began the mandate with serious deficiencies in its monitoring and control infrastructure, shortcomings previously highlighted by Romania’s Court of Accounts in both its 2023 and 2024 reports.
Four major digital systems are now under public procurement: a gaming device traceability platform; a self-exclusion system featuring an integrated chatbot; an operator activity monitoring system covering transactions, entries and exits; and a process automation and document management platform designed to streamline internal procedures, including licensing.
The broader legislative backdrop remains highly active. Advertising reform proposals covering street-level promotions and time-based restrictions on online gambling campaigns are also progressing through Parliament, adding further regulatory change for operators to navigate.
As the second year of Soare’s mandate begins, the pending Emergency Ordinance on self-exclusion, the rollout of the four digital systems and the implementation of the “Aware and Free” programme will serve as the most immediate tests of whether ONJN can consolidate its reform agenda.
The authority also continues to operate under sustained political pressure, with some parties still advocating for its replacement by an entirely new regulatory structure.
Keep reading
Do you have a story worth sharing?
Send it over to our editors!
