Romania’s gambling regulator, ONJN, has seen its recent classification of Polymarket as an unlicensed gambling platform upheld by the local courts.
This decision comes after Polymarket formally requested ONJN’s classification to be suspended by the Romanian courts as the company protests that it is not, in fact, a gambling entity. Romania was, indeed, one of the first European nations to enforce gambling regulatory action against prediction market platforms in its market, with Polymarket now having been banned in numerous Western and Eastern European nations.
Now, this latest ruling has been greeted as a victory by the Romanian regulator, with the ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare stating via LinkedIn: “There has been a lot of speculation around this decision. In reality, the stake was not and is not only Polymarket. The real stake is to protect the legal framework that regulates gambling and prevent a dangerous loophole: redefining betting under the seemingly harmless name of ‘prediction platform’.
“If the suspension had been upheld, the effects would have gone far beyond the situation of a single platform. A precedent would have been created whereby even licensed operators could have avoided tax and compliance obligations (taxes, self-exclusion, KYC, reporting to the Office for Money Laundering, etc.), transforming regulated products into so-called ‘prediction markets’. Further, these mechanisms could have moved into the crypto area, following the Polymarket model, paving the way for decentralised casinos, outside of any effective control.”
Last month, Polymarket access was officially also blocked in Argentina by order of a Buenos Aires court, which deemed the platform to be operating as an unlicensed gambling service within the nation’s market.
In the US market, however, Polymarket continues to thrive – having opened its first ever ‘Situation Room’ bar in Washington, D.C. during March.
During Q1 2026, Polymarket was also ruled out of the Netherlands by the KSA
