Romania’s plenary Chamber of Deputies has adopted the draft law amending and approving the GEO 92/2014 – the emergency ordinance introduced late last year to introduce fundamental changes at several levels in remote gambling.
The draft law will now be sent to the President of Romania for final approval, so it can be fully activated in the country.
The President does have the power to send the draft law back to be reconsidered, but this is thought to be unlikely. Once it is approved and published in the country’s Official Gazette, the law will be introduced fully within three days.
The draft law will amend several requirements for obtaining an online gambling licence and authorisation and provide a requirement list for an online gaming transitory period (ending on December 31, 2015).
Ana-Maria Baciu, Head of intellectual property at the Bucarest-based law firm NNDKP, commented: “After a wait that lasted more than six years, the Romanian online gambling market has finally opened for foreign operators. We will now have to wait and see who will be willing to pay the envisaged backtax, and then time will tell whether the investment – in both time and money – will have been worth it.”
However, irrespective of how the operators will decide to proceed with respect to this market, as of now, Romania is officially on the map of fully regulated European online gambling markets.
According to the latest amendments, gambling activities may be conducted under Romanian jurisdiction not only by Romanian legal entities, but also by operators headquartered within a European Union (EU) Member State or in Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein or the Swiss Confederation.
Key points of the law include:
* The servers may be placed anywhere in the EU but the operators will also have to have a safe server and a mirror server that must be located in Romania;
* The authorities are also considering regulating a retrospective tax for companies operating in Romania without a licence. This tax and specific conditions to be fulfilled are subject to approval by the Romanian Parliament, which is in the process of adopting the law for approval of the primary legislation;
* New activities and new products have been regulated through the primary legislation for Romanian gambling market, such as (i) land-based and remote (online) betting exchange, (ii) remote casino-type games, (iii) poker games carried out in poker clubs, (iv) tombola games, (v) temporary gambling activities carried out in resorts and (vi) new games or combinations of gambling games (online or offline), as defined by the amended legislation.
As reported previously by iGaming Business, There are also changes for player taxation consisting of a triple threshold system according to revenue, and account transfers.
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
