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ONJN President Pledges Go Back To Accountability for Romania Gambling In 2026

ONJN, Romania's National Office for Gambling, has set out its programme for 2026 aimed at reinforcing compliance enforcement and restoring regulative standards across the marketplace.
Vlad Soare: ONJN
The goals of the program have been vowed by ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare, who has positioned the strategy as a necessary action to bring back trust and confidence in a regulator whose governance has come under sustained criticism.
Soare presumed management of ONJN in May 2025, following the resignation of former president Gabriel Gheorghe, who stepped down in the middle of scrutiny over a series of audit failures. The prominent failings were connected to regulative imperfections that supposedly left close to EUR1bn in tax and authorisation charges uncollected.
Reflecting on the regulator's actions in 2025, Soare described the year as a "non-linear and uncomfortable path", but one that nevertheless provided "concrete development in the battle against illegal gambling and towards greater openness".
Operating under extreme political analysis, Soare specified that ONJN had provided "concrete achievements", mainly through improved enforcement activity. Actions included the confiscation of more than 200 gaming machines, the blacklisting of over 200 illegal betting sites, and the filing of 48 criminal problems linked to financial criminal offense and unlicensed operations.
Among the brand-new initiatives highlighted was the launch of ONJN's first channel, enabling members of the public to notify of presumed prohibited gaming machines and enhance land-based enforcement. In the digital sector, ONJN reported a 98% takedown rate for prohibited gambling material served to Romanian audiences across platforms run by Meta, Google and TikTok.
Enforcement will stay ONJN's main priority in 2026, supported by the planned Q1 rollout of 2 significant systems: an unified National Self-Exclusion scheme covering both retail and online gaming, and a geolocation-based QR system integrated into the regulator's main register.
"Any citizen can now validate where video gaming devices are located, who owns them and whether they are legal," Soare composed.
On gamer safeguards, ONJN will manage a new single self-exclusion procedure, handled solely by the regulator. The procedure will present clear exclusion periods, a specified difference between account closure and self-exclusion, and a "cool-off" phase preventing immediate re-entry.
Further technical upgrades will include automated monitoring of deals, benefits and operator statements to spot black-market activity, together with the launch of a new electronic file platform. The latter will permit all operator interactions with ONJN to take place fully online, supported by an upgraded site and a dedicated petitions portal.
ONJN wants modernisation
Aware of the political analysis surrounding betting, Soare has actually supported the overhaul of Romania's Law on Games of Chance. Soare argues that authorities must comply to design a "coherent and effective legal framework" to change what he referred to as "an ethically out-of-date Gambling Law".
End-of-year proceedings saw 20 legislative proposals sent to Parliament, calling for sweeping modifications to the governance of gambling. Revisions under the new four-party "pro-Europe" coalition saw the Liberal Party (PNL) call for Romania's gambling age to be raised to 21, sent under the required of "safeguarding the age of innocence".
Elsewhere, union member Save Romania Union (USR) sent a series of amendments calling for a restriction on untargeted advertising and sports sponsorships. USR has actually preserved that the overhaul of Romanian gambling policy should consist of the disbanding of ONJN, mentioning a loss of rely on its governance across Romanian public organizations.
Back to institutional accountability
Soare has acknowledged that 2026 will be a definitive year for ONJN, with the regulator's future set to be shaped by continuous political and regulative proceedings. He has freely acknowledged that governance reforms, legal results and parliamentary examination will ultimately determine the authority's long-term function within Romania's gambling framework.
Despite this unpredictability, ONJN has actually reiterated its responsibility to continue governing Romania's gambling market throughout 2026, keeping enforcement, licensing oversight and customer protection steps as structural reforms are debated at a political level.
As part of this dedication, the regulator has actually allocated EUR5m in financing for 2026 to support local authorities and civil societies in taking on problem betting through community-driven prevention, education and intervention efforts. The programme represents ONJN's very first large-scale, structured investment in harm-reduction measures supplied by regional authorities.