Europe

Romania will release a total of €5m (£4.3m) in grants to fight problem gambling through funding from the regulator, the ONJN.

The funding is being released under the National Public Interest Programme ‘Conscious and Free’ under a commitment made by the ONJN and published in the Official Gazette in December 2025.

Grants will come in the form of non-reimbursable financing for non-profit activities, taken directly from ONJN’s 2026 budget intended for the promotion of socially responsible gambling.

Funding will be structured into three pillars. The lion’s share of it – €3.6m – will be released for prevention and education, protection of minors, treatment and counselling, research, digitalisation, and promotion of responsible gambling.

A total of €1.2m will be allocated to the creation or expansion of specialised treatment centres, which can only be claimed by public authorities.

Lastly, the remainder of €200,000 will subsidise studies and impact assessments to help inform future publi..

Fears that the door could be opened for an influx of players seeking to reclaim losses from Maltese operators have been intensified following the latest ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

The CJEU has aligned with the view that contracts between players residing in Germany and operators that aren’t licensed in the country are essentially void.

Long-standing legal conflicts between Malta and the member states of Germany and Austria over a myriad of compensation claims has escalated over the past decade, requiring the determination of the Attorney General of the CJEU.

In a preliminary ruling requested by the First Hall of the Civic Court in Malta, the EU court outlined that players could be entitled to claim back losses from operators not licensed in the country. The European Court deemed that Article 56 TFEU – an EU law concerning restrictions on the provision of unrestricted services – does not supersede national laws related to online gambling disputes..

Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), the Dutch gambling authority, has divested more funds into the reduction of problem gambling in the Netherlands.

A total of five new projects have been announced as the recipients of grants from the KSA’s Addiction Prevention Fund. This aids the treatment and prevention of gambling-related harm among the Dutch population – 20% of which is currently at a moderate to high risk of harmful behaviour, according to the regulator.

One grant will go to the Anonymous Gamblers Foundation (AGOG), a support group for compulsive gamblers, for the training of new counsellors. Additionally, AGOG will further explore the idea of launching digital counselling aimed at residents living in areas where on-site meetings are not possible.

The Dutch Association for Psychiatry (NVvP) is another grant recipient under the Addiction Prevention Fund, which will be used to create specialised guidelines for treating gambling disorders.

As the NVvP currently informs mental health profes..

National lottery provider and the biggest gambling operator in the Netherlands, Nederlandse Loterij, has issued a notice that it will seek its legal rights against operator Qbet and all connected entities behind it.

Qbet, owned by Novatech together with 55Bet, another illegal entity targeting Dutch consumers, was labeled as “the largest illegal gambling site” in the Netherlands by Nederlandse Loterij.

As such, the licensed operator announced that it will seek to permanently bring down Qbet and the larger chain of command by leveraging all legal measures it has at its disposal.

A similar lawsuit, again by Nederlandse Loterij, was launched against Lalabet in 2025, which was the first such at this scale. Hearings in that case are currently taking place at The Hague.

It would be interesting to see how the latest case with Novatech develops, as the company is licensed in Curaçao, and although it is an autonomous nation under the Dutch Crown, the legal systems of both Curaçao and the Net..

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has confirmed that online gaming and gambling will be the “next issue to look at” in a widening push to introduce age-related digital safeguards.

The comments, which are not the first on the topic, follow the administration’s headline proposal to prohibit social media access for under-15s, backed by mandatory age verification requirements for platforms from 1 January 2027. While the immediate focus is on social media, the direction of travel is towards forming a broader compliance perimeter around all digital products with youth exposure risks, including regulated betting and gaming.

In an interview with infokids.gr, Mitsotakis positioned gaming and online gambling, as well as artificial intelligence, as the logical next steps for the Greek government to take after social media controls, explicitly linking future interventions to enforcement gaps already observed in gambling.

He noted that while gambling is “typically prohibited under 21,” r..

Unibet has been criticised in the Netherlands for violating the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act (Wwft).

Optdeck Service Limited, which operates the FDJ United brand in the market, has been issued an AML/CFT directive from the Dutch gaming authority Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) after an investigation found that customer due diligence was ‘not being performed well enough’.

The KSA noted that transaction monitoring and control measures don’t align well with Unibet’s policy in practice and that it must adjust its policy to make the monitoring of players and their transactions more effective.

In particular, the regulator highlighted that policy adjustments are needed regarding financial thresholds.

With the directive, Unibet has been told by the KSA that it must cease the various violations. However, the regulator spotlighted that the operator had ‘a cooperative attitude and proactively worked on a remediation plan’, with some violations stopped during th..