Steve Hoare

Two draft proposals have been submitted to Romania’s Parliament, as parties forming the new Liberal Pro Europe Coalition government desire to drastically overhaul the governance of gambling.
Last week, Raluca Turcan, a Minister of the Liberal Party (PNL), submitted a draft proposal demanding that Parliament increase the Romanian age of gambling from 18 to 21.
Turcan called for PNL ministers to back her proposal as the “simplest measure to restrict gambling at the most fragile age”.

Protect the Age of Innocence

Turcan’s draft bill marks the PNL Party’s first step in addressing gambling reforms, a subject matter that has grabbed national attention.

The PNL minister views the age of 18-21 as the “most emotionally and financially vulnerable stage of those entering adulthood” – a period she sees as defined by impulsivity, early income management, and limited understanding of long-term risk.

The proposal aims to provide “a window of emotional and financial maturity” by restricting gambling access until age 21. Turcan highlighted successful precedents in Portugal, Greece and Moldova, where raising the legal age helped reduce youth indebtedness and early signs of gambling addiction.

Her proposal recognises the recommendations of a youth report made by international charity Save the Children which recommended Romania raise the legal age for gambling and ban gambling advertising across all mediums.

USR calls for toughest measures
A second, more sweeping draft bill was filed by Diana Stoica of the Save Romania Union (USR), marking a long-anticipated intervention by a party that is the most outspoken critic of Romania’s gambling sector and its regulatory failures.

Stoica noted that the bill responds to a “national drama hiding in plain sight,” citing research that one in four Romanian teenagers has participated in gambling before turning 18, with many starting before age 14.

Her proposal introduces a strict 06:00–24:00 ban on online gambling advertising, reflecting the digital habits of minors and young adults. It also prohibits the use of influencers, athletes and online personalities, arguing that these figures “normalise betting” and act as the primary gateway for youth gambling.

Additional measures include mandatory, prominent “addiction-risk warnings”, and a clampdown on indirect marketing through cultural or sports sponsorships when these campaigns serve as covert promotional tools.

Both proposals call for an overhaul of the Jocurilor de Noroc (Law of Games of Chance) incorporated in 2009 and last revised in 2023. Changes are needed to incorporate stricter age rules, digital-era advertising limits, and mandatory warnings.

ONJN to face reckoning
The USR has long called for a complete overhaul of gambling governance following a series of high-profile fallouts earlier this year that exposed severe structural failures at the national regulator, ONJN.

At the centre of the controversy was a failed financial audit, which revealed that ONJN had neglected to collect almost €1bn in tax and licensing income, a fiasco that dominated news cycles at the start of the year. ONJN defended itself by claiming that successive governments had failed to update and integrate tax-collection systems despite annual changes to gambling duties since 2018.

The scandal prompted a leadership reshuffle, appointing Vlad-Cristian Soare as the new head of ONJN. Yet the office remains under scrutiny, with USR openly advocating for ONJN to be disbanded entirely.

The party wants the Ministry of Taxation to assume temporary control of gambling oversight until the coalition establishes a new governing authority with modern compliance systems.

Adding further pressure on ONJN, September saw a wave of city mayors and municipal governments demand the right to licence and tax gambling establishments directly. The mayors argued that the change was urgently needed to recover lost revenues and stressed that they had “lost all trust” in the national regulator.

Coalition wants a coordinated push on reforms

Both bills arrive as part of a broader realignment under Romania’s new coalition government, formed in June and tasked with rethinking the country’s gambling, taxation and digital-economy policies.

New Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare, appointed by newly elected President Nicușor Dan, has been mandated to review and change gambling taxation once again.

As disclosed earlier this year, The Ministry of Finance is preparing a major redesign of the tax regime, set to take effect from June 2026, introducing new tiered tax bands on player winnings and increasing licensing fees across all gambling activities.

Nazare painted the measures as necessary: “We want to send a very important signal regarding the taxation of gambling, which we know very well how harmful it is to vulnerable communities when left unchecked.”

Although the PNL and USR proposals differ in scope, together they reflect an accelerating consensus within the governing bloc: Romania’s gambling sector requires a structural reset from youth protection and digital advertising to taxation, oversight and regulatory accountability.

Further legislative activity is expected in the coming months, as coalition partners prepare additional proposals on education, prevention, compliance, and long-term youth protection as Romanian politics views 2026 as a year of change for the gambling sector.

Norway’s monopoly regime is once again under fire from the state regulator, raising more questions about the future of the market.

Lottstift, the Norwegian gambling authority, is considering the issue of a penalty for Norsk Rikstoto – the country’s exclusive horse betting provider – in relation to a number of AML deficiencies.

An audit by Lottstift for the period between 6 February and 27 May 2025 has revealed a list of violations of Norway’s Money Laundering Act, which threatens Norsk Rikstoto with a fine of up to NOK 2mn (£150k) and an additional NOK 50k per day until “the deviation is corrected”.

What are the failures?
According to the investigation, the AML compliance team of Norsk Rikstoto consists of an insufficient number of people and relies on manual work procedures, which leaves “great” room for improvement in terms of automation and reducing the risks of errors due to overburdening workloads.

Another identified shortfall is Norsk Rikstoto’s customer risk assessments. Lottstift reported that the operator should make improvements as to how it classifies customers based on their risk profile, with the current distinction between monitoring and follow-up procedures not quite clear yet.

On the topic of risk management, the regulator also advised Norsk Rikstoto to conduct a review of its internal policies and ensure that the risk management process is harmonised across all departments.

Compliance documentation was another identified deficiency, with Lottstift stating: “Both the review of sample checks and what we observed during on-site inspections have shown that there is a lack of a systematic approach to documentation and logging of implemented measures, assessments and choices. We saw that some customers/cases have better descriptions of the course of the case than others.”

Finally, Lottstift focused on how effective Norsk Rikstoto is when reporting the implementation of audit recommendations, also identifying room for improvement there.

Atle Hamar, Director of Lottstift, commented: “They have deliberately set aside absolute legal requirements that should enable them to uncover and prevent money laundering.

“When they do not have good enough systems, the risk of them being exploited for money laundering increases.

“Money laundering is a serious social problem. We expect that a monopoly operator with over 170,000 players follows the law and has better control over how they will uncover and prevent money laundering.”

Lottstift lawyers say a fine is justified
Lottstift additionally released an official notice, where Tatyana Søreide Klepaker, Senior Legal Advisor for the regulator, reflected on whether a fine should be imposed.

According to Klepaker, the offences are pervasive and serious enough to suggest that a fine should be imposed.

“After a comprehensive assessment of the case….we find that a violation fine should be imposed,” she wrote. “Our assessment is that Norsk Rikstoto has good financial capacity, and that imposing the violation fee will not be disproportionately burdensome for Norsk Rikstoto’s finances.”

Norway at a crossroads
Besides Norsk Rikstoto, the regulator has also been closely monitoring Norsk Tipping – Norway’s state-owned provider of lottery, sports betting and instant games.

It has also found itself embroiled in controversy more than once over the last year, having been found violating multiple compliance standards – from AML breaches to marketing regulations.

With scrutiny over the two operators constantly piling up, the future of Norway’s monopoly market remains at a crossroads given that it will become the only monopoly regime in the Nordics after Finland transitions to a licenced market in 2027.