Romania’s gambling regulator says it wants 2026 to be the year accountability finally returns to the sector. Whether anyone believes that promise is another matter.
After years of controversy and mounting political pressure, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has outlined a new set of priorities for the year ahead. The plan comes as the authority remains under intense scrutiny, with its own future now tied to parliamentary debates that could fundamentally reshape — or even dismantle — the regulator itself.
The message is being delivered by Vlad-Cristian Soare, who took over as ONJN president in May 2025 following the resignation of Gabriel Gheorghe. That exit was anything but routine. Audits uncovered serious regulatory failures, and the fallout raised uncomfortable questions about how nearly €1bn in gambling taxes and licence fees slipped through the cracks without triggering earlier alarms.
For critics, the scandal didn’t just expose poor oversight. It suggested a regulator that had lost control of the market it was supposed to police.
A year spent firefighting
Soare has not tried to paint his first months in office as a success story. Internally, 2025 is being described as a difficult and often chaotic period — a year spent reacting to inherited problems rather than setting long-term policy.
Still, ONJN insists that enforcement finally began to bite. Over the past year, inspectors seized hundreds of illegal gaming machines, blocked access to more than 200 unlicensed gambling websites, and referred dozens of cases for criminal investigation linked to illicit operators and financial irregularities.
Online enforcement, in particular, has been held up as proof of progress. ONJN says it managed to remove almost all illegal gambling content targeting Romanian players from major digital platforms. That claim, while notable, has been met with some scepticism, given how easily such content has re-emerged in the past under different branding.
What’s harder to measure is whether this represents a lasting shift — or simply a burst of activity prompted by political pressure.
Turning to systems instead of discretion
One of the clearest signals of ONJN’s new direction is its reliance on technology. The regulator plans to roll out a geolocation-based QR system linked to its central register, allowing anyone to check where gambling machines are located, who owns them, and whether they are authorised.
It’s a move that quietly acknowledges a core problem of the past: too much depended on manual checks, inconsistent reporting, and opaque decision-making.
A similar logic underpins the planned national self-exclusion system, which would bring both land-based and online gambling under a single, regulator-controlled process. The new framework is intended to remove ambiguity around exclusion periods, prevent instant reactivation, and clearly separate voluntary account closures from formal self-exclusion.
ONJN is also planning automated monitoring of transactions and bonuses, alongside a fully digital platform for licensing and operator communications. If implemented properly, these changes would reduce direct contact between operators and officials — an area long associated with uneven enforcement and regulatory blind spots.
Politics closing in
All of this is happening while lawmakers openly debate the future of gambling regulation itself. By the end of 2025, more than 20 legislative proposals had landed in Parliament, reflecting growing unease across the political spectrum.
Within the governing coalition, some parties are pushing for tougher age limits, while others want to clamp down on advertising and sports sponsorships. More significantly, there are voices arguing that ONJN has lost the trust of other public institutions and should be disbanded altogether.
Soare has responded by backing a full rewrite of Romania’s gambling law, describing the current framework as outdated and no longer fit for purpose. His position is clear: enforcement cannot succeed if the legal foundations are fractured and politically contested.
Whether that argument is enough to save the regulator remains uncertain.
The last chance year
Perhaps the most notable shift in tone comes from ONJN’s approach to player protection. For 2026, the authority has set aside €5m to fund prevention, education, and intervention programs run by local authorities and civil society groups. It is the first time ONJN has committed structured, nationwide funding to harm-reduction efforts.
Supporters see this as a long-overdue step. Critics view it as a late attempt to demonstrate relevance as Parliament weighs more radical reforms.
Soare has admitted that ONJN’s reform process has been far from perfect. But with its credibility already damaged, perfection may no longer be the goal. Survival might be.
As 2026 approaches, Romania’s gambling regulator is effectively on trial. The coming year will decide whether ONJN can rebuild itself into a functioning watchdog — or whether it becomes another institution undone by the very failures it was meant to prevent.
Source: sbcnews.co.uk