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A Romanian court has sided with the country’s gambling regulator, confirming that Polymarket will remain on the national blacklist.
The ruling, delivered this week, rejected Polymarket’s request to suspend the earlier decision by the National Gambling Office (ONJN), which had classified the platform as operating without a license.
ONJN President Vlad‑Cristian Soare marked the outcome with a statement on LinkedIn, writing, “Today we achieved a first important victory in the case of Polymarket.” He added that the judgment validates the regulator’s intervention and shows the legitimacy of its approach. Romania was one of the first jurisdictions to act against the platform, placing it on the blacklist in October 2025.
Since then, several European countries have followed suit, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Germany, and Italy.
“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”,” Soare stated.
$600 million trade volume on Romanian presidential elections led to 2025 ban
Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN) blacklisted Polymarket in October 2025 after detecting what it described as an “explosive increase” in activity during the country’s election season
Regulators reported that trading volumes on the platform exceeded $600 million during the presidential race and another $15 million during the Bucharest local elections. These figures reflected cumulative transactions rather than individual wagers, but the ONJN argued they revealed a scale of unregulated betting that demanded intervention.
The regulator concluded that Polymarket fit the legal definition of a counterparty betting operator, even though the company presented itself as an event-trading or prediction platform.
By allowing users to stake money on future outcomes and charging commissions on trades, ONJN said the platform was operating as a gambling provider without a license. “It would be a reckless precedent to allow counterparty betting to be reclassified as trading,” the Office said at the time.
“Whether you bet in lei or crypto, if you bet money on a future outcome, under the conditions of a counterparty bet, we are talking about gambling that must be licensed. The ONJN will not allow the blockchain to be turned into a screen for illegal gambling,” Soare added.
