Romania is liberalising their online gaming market and increasing the taxes

Romania has been strongly affected by the international economic crisis, and is now obliged to rapidly deal with its deficit and fill its coffers.
This is the main reason why the government has just liberalised the national online gaming market, even though it might affect the development of the industry, as the taxes are set very high.

An agreement with the International Monetary Fund

Romania is currently one of the poorest countries in the European Union.
The country signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last December, in which they committed themselves to reduce their new debt to 1.83% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, compared to the 2.2% of the previous year.
The government now has to quickly find ways to make money.
This is the reason why they recently adopted a decree to liberalise online gambling and also to increase the tax burden on slot machines, sports betting and casinos.

The reaction of the operators

The opening of the market has obviously been a welcomed step by the operators of online casinos, as it will allow hundreds of thousands of Romanians, who were previously playing on foreign websites to legally play in online casinos in their own country.
However, the industry players have strongly criticised the second part of the decree: the part that concerns the increase of taxation.
In fact, they feel that this increase is likely to have adverse effects on the entire sector, since taxes were already unbearable.

A contraction in an already difficult market

In order to be able to offer online gambling in Romania, an operator will now have two pay a tax relating to their revenue, up to €180,000 per year.
This measure can lead to a contraction of the market, and likely will not generate more revenue, especially since it is known that the Romanian betting market generates much less since the start of the global economic crisis in 2008.
The number of land-based casinos has decreased from 22 in 2009 to only 5 casinos now.
Additionally, it is important to note that these establishments have around 50 visitors every day, the average used to be 400.
Similarly, the amounts that are being wagered also decreased, and they are now around €50 per customer on an average.