Why it is important to have good gambling legislation 1p3622

We are writing this article with the report of the Control Body of the Ministry of Finance in mind as it appeared in the press. The things you learn from reading this report horrify you, but they also confirm the suspicions you had at one point about the seized way the ONJN has been operating for a few years. So it is essential to find out why it is important to have good gambling legislation. 1u5b29

This article is not an analysis of the aforementioned report, but it is intended to highlight the importance of good and coherent legislation in the field of gambling if we want to move forward and become an economic branch respected by the public and producing substantial revenues for society through the taxes we pay. 5hu8

gambling legislation

Good legislation means coherent, unitary legislation 42303k

It is not normal to have good legislation with gaps. Loopholes in legislative regulations will sooner or later be speculated on from a competitive point of view by companies, and the state is obliged to watch out and not let that happen. If it does, then it fails in its main mission when it watches over an area, which is to provide a unified legislative environment that leads to fair competition in the market, that compares prices and services, and provides operators and ultimately players with a healthy and predictable environment. You can’t grant an operating licence under one piece of legislation at one time, then revoke it (the licence) and then cancel your revocation, and then have it shown that changes in legislation are needed to provide a level playing field for everyone. You need to say stop the game and correct the mistake as soon as possible. Failure to do so creates imbalance, frustration and animosity, and casts a kind of fog over the business environment that leads to jeers and accusations. You, as an institution (ONJN) lose your fairness and with it the respect of the business community, and it loses confidence in you.

Without good legislation you cannot protect gamblers from abuse and addiction q4369

The main concern of an institution such as the ONJN should be the player, the person who enters the gaming room, the betting agency or the live casino to have fun, to spend quality time. I’m not talking about the money that is lying in some s waiting for concrete projects dedicated to the responsibility of gambling, but I’m talking about the act of legislating, of proposing normative acts for public debate, or legislative amendments sent to the Government and then to Parliament. We only see a lot of draft legislation coming out of Parliament made by politicians from various parties for political purposes, which sounds like: “ban”, “limit”, “cancel” and so on. And to these initiatives we have no response from the institution that should know everything about this area, because it has in its hands all the information and all the levers, but it does nothing, it just assists uncaring, not expressing relevant and argued points of view, that thank God it could, it sits on a ton of information. ONJN should have the initiative, he should propose improvements to the legal framework.

A regulation coming from the National Gaming Office on this direction of player protection should quickly turn into a self-regulation of our industry. I’m convinced that if the ONJN were to call on the industry to come together to do a project for player protection, for example, the companies that make up the gambling market would respond positively. It is in our interest to transform the mentality of our gamblers from one that is eminently dedicated to the desire to win, to get rich, to one that wants to spend quality time with family or friends, in an ordinary entertainment, not one driven by crazy, illusory desires to win, which contradict the laws of mathematics and statistics. And then the politicians’ talk and fuss would have been obsolete, not even begun, because it would have no basis.

Legislative clarity of purpose 2hb5g

Deadlines, instruments, transparency, use of the same unit of measurement for all involved. Swift implementation of secondary legislation, complementary to primary legislation. Provide clear grace periods for companies to comply. Staging measures so that they do not disrupt the business environment. Report all legislative changes and regulations on time, i.e. everything must be done within a given timeframe and be taken on board by the Office. And the time period within which you have to legislate must be clear and predictable, and take into the specifics of the industry. You have to say what you want to do, what you want to regulate, why you want to do it (the purpose) and in how long, and you have to keep your word and deliver within the assumed timeframe. At the moment there is no clear national strategy of what is wanted with this area of gambling. It is not normal not to know where you are, what your short, medium and long term goals are, where you want to go and how. And that’s exactly what we have, a generalised and continuous chaos. I look at Italy, which has been told for years how bad it is there, that gambling is about to close down, and I find out that their market in 2022 alone had a GGR that grew by 31%, up to 19.6 billion euros, while tax revenues amounted to 11.2 billion euros, an increase of 28%, for a population of over 60 million inhabitants, i.e. 3 times the size of ours, and we are beating our fists to the chest for paying the state 600 million euros annually. Do you know what Meloni is doing now in Italy? She is preparing a legislative amendment to strengthen the gambling market, to make it more predictable, to strengthen state control of the sector in the territory, to better protect gamblers from the danger of addiction and to turn this industry into one of the biggest contributors to the Italian state budget, to be in third place after tourism and the fashion industry. And what do we do? Something concrete, something useful… We make groups that act “antagonistic”, right? I thought that’s what the report of the Control Corps of the Ministry of Finance said…

Legislation should provide sustainability to the business environment 1g2w55

Gambling legislation in Romania should provide sustainability, i.e. allow businesses in our industry to have continuity. So that after a legislative change, new companies can continue and develop their activity. Most of the time, when legislation is ed in our country, the companies have moments of confusion, they are upset by what happens to them, because almost every time they are not consulted by the legislator, whether we are talking about the Government or Parliament. Perhaps sometimes this happens as a formality, to tick off the fact that the authorities have sat down with those whose working environment, whose way of doing business, will change in the near future. And most of the time these rule changes happen in the middle of the game, without any notice. The legislator should give companies time to prepare for what’s coming, to provide impact studies and scientific analysis for the measures that will happen in the future. That’s the only way you can really consult with the one you’re regulating. Otherwise it is nothing more than a mimicry of social dialogue with business.

Conclusion 542t2p

We have certainly not touched on all the issues that this article was intended to address, but our message is clear: people impose laws on other people in order to improve the work and lives of all of society. At least in theory… If this is not achieved, the effect of regulation will not be as intended.