With a legislation that kept changing during the past 6 years, 2015 has finally brought us a legal framework that apparently works for online gambling operators. Thus, on December 29, in the last meeting of 2014, the Government has approved an emergency ordinance that generated major changes to the gambling regime in Romania. The ordinance came into force in February 2015,and has been subsequently approved and amended by a law that the Parliament has passed almost 4 month later.
The new law came into force on June 12, 2015, and has offered the online gambling operators the possibility to obtain criminal and fiscal amnesty for past activities targeting Romanian customers. And this was not all, as the operators were also given the possibility to apply, based on a simplified and abridged procedure, to be granted an interim right to operate and organize remote gambling activities in Romania. Following this procedure, 16 operators have been granted the right to organize and operate remote gambling on this market. The list is available here.
In addition, a few selected others – that have been present on the Romanian market at different times in the past, but whodo not intend to continue their operations here in the (near) future – have submitted the documents and paid the fees in order to clear their past and benefit from the amnesty provisions. Together with other operators that used to offer online gambling services to Romanian customers, but that probably have not yet cleared the past, they have been included by the authority on a blacklist (available here). The access of Romanian players to the websites included on such a blacklist is banned by the ISPs, and their access attempts are redirected to an IP address belonging to the Special Telecommunications Service (the central specialized structure which organizes and coordinates the activities in the special telecommunications field for the Romanian public authorities).And we expect more to come/happen.
For Romania, the future of online gambling is here. Roll the dice!
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