Romanian ministers have been encouraged to support new rules that would cap gambling expenses at 10% of a player’s monthly income.
The proposal is the centerpiece of a set of draft laws put forth by the Save Romania Union (USR), which believes that because of the negative effects of the National Office for Gambling of Romania (ONJN), “new accountability is needed to govern gambling.”
USR will present a measure to Parliament calling for the National Bank and the Tax Authority (ANAF) to oversee gambling licenses in a new way.
10% of a customer’s monthly income is the proposed cap on gambling expenses for both retail and online accounts under the new rules. Given that ONJN is the subject of a legislative investigation for “severe regulatory negligence,” it is unclear if USR intends to implement this ban as a temporary or permanent measure.
For this protection, Romanian license holders will have to disclose real-time client spending data to the National Bank to track online gambling spending and to ANAF for retail expenditures.
One million Gamblers spend more than their income
With the claim that “1 million active gamblers exceed their income through gambling,” USR blasted government officials for failing to acknowledge Romania’s vulnerability to the financial risks associated with gambling.
Additionally, the law will suggest that Romania replace the ONJN’s current self-exclusion system with a new, more straightforward one.
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In order to handle real-time self-exclusion requests, the new self-exclusion plan proposal will demand that customer registration be active throughout Romanian gambling license holders’ websites and venues.
The government has been encouraged to investigate self-exclusion liabilities as a result of ONJN’s negligence. The investigation must ensure that Romanian license holders will reimburse self-excluded persons who were permitted to gamble.
“ONJN is either incapable or complicit in the harms of gambling,” stated Adrian Giurgiu, a USR deputy. Restricting the amount of time addicts can spend playing is the answer. The battle is unfair in Romania since gambling expenses exceed the budgets of important ministries. Many of the roughly one million participants run the risk of becoming the next tragedy.
Following a critical audit of ONJN by the Court of Accounts (CCR), the governance of Romania’s gambling industry has come under examination.
The ONJN leadership has been summoned to Parliament to address the auditing shortcomings concerning licenses and authorization fees for the 2019–2023 timeframe.
According to the CCR’s audit, ONJN’s extreme carelessness in reporting and overseeing licenses resulted in possible tax liabilities of between 3.3 billion and 4.3 billion lei (€630 million to €900 million).
ONJN stated that tax collection has never been a statutory responsibility of its agency and attributed the inconsistencies to the usage of antiquated analogue IT systems for filing tax forms.
According to USR Senator Sebastian Cernic, who will introduce the bill in Parliament, ministers must choose “whether to protect citizens or favor the gambling industry.”
Gambling is where hundreds of thousands of addicts squander their final money. Some people who are on the edge of despair commit suicide. Addiction to gambling is an illness that has to be treated as such.
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