The ONJN Consultative Council will meet on 18 November 2026 at 11:00 to start talks on gambling law changes, a national addiction treatment programme, self-exclusion and the online black market, Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN) said in a press release.
The regulator described the meeting as “the start of a framework for consultation and dialogue” on the regulation and supervision of the Romanian gambling market (translated from Romanian). It is the second step in the ONJN reform in two weeks.
What the ONJN Consultative Council will discuss
The agenda published by ONJN lists seven subjects:
- a national programme for treating gambling-related addiction;
- the legislative changes the sector needs;
- the effects of the new regulations on how gambling activities are organised and run;
- applying the self-exclusion procedure in the same way across the market;
- fighting the online gambling black market;
- how player transactions in land-based gambling venues are recorded;
- drafting and applying a framework regulation for online activities, fixed-odds betting and traditional gambling.
ONJN said it wants the consultations to examine existing problems from several perspectives and to produce solutions that can become “coherent legislative and administrative measures” (translated from Romanian). The subjects cover how the market works and is regulated, player protection and action against operators working outside the legal framework, according to the release.
Part of the ONJN reform
The meeting follows ONJN’s decision of 30 October to change the make-up of the working group that drafts gambling legislation, with the aim of replacing the rules in force with a new legal framework, as The iGaming Europe reported on ONJN’s plans for a new gambling law. Romanian gambling has been governed since 2009 by Government Emergency Ordinance 77/2009, amended several times in the past two years.
The latest amendment, Emergency Ordinance 7/2026 of February, made municipal approval a condition for opening slot halls and betting shops. Councils in Timișoara and across Iași county have since used it to phase out gaming halls.
Two agenda items build on work started under Valentin-Ioan Tomescu, who has led ONJN since August. On 14 September he named a national programme for the prevention and treatment of gambling addiction among his four priorities. A presidential order of 25 September set fixed hours at the territorial services that take self-exclusion requests, and the national self-exclusion register held 61,473 people on 2 November, according to ONJN.
On the online black market, the ONJN Supervisory Committee blacklisted about 800 domains in a single decision on 31 July, more than double its previous record, using a tool that detects clone websites.
Next steps
The Consultative Council meets on 18 November at 11:00. ONJN has not set a date for a draft from its legislative working group; under Romanian law, draft normative acts go to public consultation before adoption. Two bills passed by the Senate in February, raising the minimum gambling age from 18 to 21 and restricting daytime online gambling advertising, are before the Chamber of Deputies, the deciding chamber. More on the market is in our Romania iGaming 2026 overview.
Source: National Office for Gambling (ONJN)
