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Romanian licensees have been given an “extremely tight” deadline to notify the gambling regulator about a list of changes to their business or gambling equipment, according to a lawyer who warns it could create various issues.
The rules for B2B and B2C licensees were adopted by the Romanian National Gambling Office (ONJN) when they were published in the official gazette on March 21.
The notification deadline for changes is now five business days for submission to the registry office and 48 hours for online submissions.
Andrei Cosma, a partner at Romania-based law firm Baciu Partners, called the notification deadline “extremely tight”.
“There are numerous international providers licensed in Romania, with complex corporate structures, so having this incredibly tight timeframe for notification might create various issues,” Cosma told Vixio GamblingCompliance.
Changes to gambling equipment, company directors, shareholders, authorised representatives, share capital and when contracts conclude with suppliers are in the long list of notifications that must be sent to the ONJN.
“On the gaming equipment issue, we hope this will be construed in the sense that operators/providers must notify only those changes to the initial licensing data/documentation (so not everything, simply what has changed from the gaming equipment disclosed/described in the initial file),” Cosma said.
However, he added that the “notion is super vague and will probably generate divergent interpretations in the absence of clarifications from the regulator”.
In December 2024, the ONJN submitted a draft order for public consultation, with no notable changes made to the original proposal.
The notification changes are not part of a recent trend of gambling restrictions in response to growing political concern, as the ONJN was required to issue the changes in the summer of 2022, according to Cosma.
Most recently, Romanian lawmakers have proposed a monthly financial limit for payments made to gambling operators, introduced fee changes that have proved troublesome for smaller operators and are considering an advertising ban.
