ROMBET chief proposes EU-wide anti-illegal gambling strategy with shared case files and payment-channel focus

Dan Alexandru Ghiță, president of the Romanian industry association ROMBET and a former chief of staff at Romania’s ONJN regulator, has published a draft plan for coordinated EU action against illegal online gambling. For PSPs and acquirers, the important bit is that the proposal treats black-market operators as an infrastructure problem, not just a website problem.

1. The draft calls for a permanent EU-level coordination structure with a shared database, so that findings from one national regulator are automatically passed to counterparts in other countries. The idea is simple: one operator should not get a fresh start every time a different regulator opens the file.
2. It also proposes the “one operator, one case” principle. That would combine all brands and domains linked to the same business, together with owners, payment accounts, crypto wallets, suppliers, and advertising channels, so each country does not have to investigate the same operator from scratch.
3. Another core shift is from consumer-facing enforcement to the supply chain: payment channels, hosting providers, app stores, ad platforms, and affiliates. For the high-risk payment stack, that is the part that matters most, because it puts acquirers and other intermediaries directly inside the enforcement frame.
4. On the technical side, the draft suggests an alert system and an API for checking licence status, plus automated monitoring of mirror sites. Final sanction decisions would still stay with humans and with existing legal procedures, so this is not a call for fully automated enforcement.
5. The plan also includes a temporary fiscal legalization program. Operators that disclose previously undeclared activity could undergo review of past tax obligations and seek entry into the regulated market, but participation would not guarantee a licence.

The proposal is being framed against an estimated €90 млрд illegal online gambling segment in the EU. Romania is the obvious case study here: in July 2026, ONJN added about 800 illegal sites to its blacklist in a single blocking wave, bringing the total number of blocked domains since 2013 to almost 1500. ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare has also said that more than 70% of European online gambling is handled by unlicensed operators, while illegal sites keep coming back under new domains after each block.

Ghiță plans to collect feedback from European regulators and market participants, build a working group, and present a final plan to the European Commission. Separately, Brussels is already discussing the creation of a dedicated structure inside the Commission to coordinate action against the black market.