Romania Blocks 300 Sites and Launches €5M Treatment Fund as Polymarket Ban Holds in Court

Key Takeaways:

• Romania ONJN blocked implicit 300 amerciable gambling sites and revoked 60 licenses successful its 2025-2026 mandate year.
• €5M Conștient și Liber money marks Romania’s archetypal authorities backing for gambling addiction treatment
• Romanian tribunal rejected Polymarket’s suspension petition connected April 1, keeping ONJN blacklist intact.

Romania’s Gambling Regulator Shares Block List

The Oficiul Național pentru Jocuri de Noroc (ONJN) published its enactment report connected April 24, summarising 12 months of enforcement and reform. The figures constituent to a reorientation toward achromatic marketplace enforcement. ONJN inspectors carried retired astir 11,000 power actions, issued fines totaling 10 cardinal lei (about $2.2 million), revoked 60 relation licenses, and filed 70 transgression complaints. The regulator besides issued much than 60 orders for the removal of amerciable online content, with a reported 98% compliance rate, and added 300+ unlicensed websites to its nationalist blocking list.

“This twelvemonth has shown that alteration is possible. It does not travel easy and is not done without resistance. There person been blockages, absorption and attempts to dilatory down indispensable projects, some from wrong and outside,” Soare said successful the report’s accompanying statement, confirming that ongoing investigations would continue.

A cardinal structural alteration underpinning the enforcement propulsion is the nationalist registry of gaming devices, launched by the ONJN successful October 2025. The cloud-native strategy links each registered slot instrumentality and video lottery terminal to a unsocial QR code, with mandatory geolocation tracking. The regulator has described it arsenic the archetypal of its benignant among EU regulators. The authorities besides expanded the agency’s authorization to contented takedown orders for amerciable gambling contented nether the EU Digital Services Act framework.

The ONJN inherited astir 30,000 unprocessed self-exclusion requests erstwhile Soare took office; the study says the registry present covers astir 54,000 individuals. A draught exigency ordinance presently with Romania’s Ministry of Finance would unify the self-exclusion process crossed land-based and online operators, present a mandatory cool-off period, with penalties of up to 100,000 lei for non-compliance.

The astir factual argumentation displacement came connected April 17, erstwhile ONJN opened applications for its Conștient și Liber (Aware and Free) program. The €5 cardinal money marks the archetypal clip the Romanian authorities has straight financed gambling addiction prevention and treatment. Applications adjacent May 11, with implementation moving August done December 2026.

The enactment study follows Soare’s April 1 announcement of a Bucharest tribunal ruling that rejected Polymarket’s petition to suspend ONJN’s blacklist decision. “The determination to see Polymarket connected the blacklist is not astir technology, but astir the law. Whether you stake successful lei oregon successful crypto, if you wager wealth connected a aboriginal result nether counterparty conditions, we are talking astir gambling that indispensable beryllium licensed,” Soare said astatine the time. “ONJN volition not licence blockchain to beryllium turned into a surface for amerciable betting.”

Romania separately joined the Balkan Gaming Federation successful March, a determination manufacture assemblage coordinating argumentation crossed Western Balkans markets without supplanting nationalist regulators.

The Conștient și Liber program, instrumentality registry rollout, and unified self-exclusion measure stay successful aboriginal implementation phases. ONJN’s study acknowledged that respective reforms inactive beryllium connected legislative oregon budgetary follow-through.