A Class 2 license for B2B suppliers in Romania can be obtained by any company registered in the EU and EEA. In most cases, the license is obtained for a Maltese company, due to the tax regime and the availability of the license in Malta and other countries.

The license can be obtained by B2B suppliers of the following categories:

• manufacturers, distributors, and other persons engaged in activities with gambling facilities/components;
• software providers;
• providers of platform management and hosting services for land-based and online gambling;
• certification laboratories, auditors and other organizations responsible for compliance assessment;
• payment systems;
• affiliates.

Documents normally submitted for a Class 2 license must provide the National Gaming Administration with information relating to the corporate structure of the applicant entity, such as:

• the share capital of the company;
• shareholder structure;
• the identity of the company’s directors/managers;
• the principal activities of the company;
• registered address;
• company’s articles of association and extracts from the commercial register of the applicant legal entity.

Given the wide range of services that can be provided to other authorized B2C operators under this license, certain documents and information must be submitted by us to the National Gaming Authority depending on the specific services you intend to provide in the local market. We will come back with a list of documents that must be submitted to the National Gaming Board, based on the information provided to us.

In addition, the applicant entity must meet a number of general conditions:

• it must have authorization in its country of incorporation to conduct the activity in order to obtain the Class 2 local license for which it intends to apply;
• possess all the necessary facilities and personnel to carry out such activities locally;
• it does not have any outstanding debts to the tax authorities of its country of incorporation;
• its legal representatives and shareholders have not been convicted of any criminal offences (other than acts/offences for which the conviction has already been expunged);

Thus, judicial/tax reports of the directors/shareholders of the applicant company (or similar documents issued by the State of origin), tax certificates and various affidavits must also be submitted. For example: tax returns and criminal records.

Tax registration of the company with the local tax authority in Romania is also required.

By law, reporting requirements are only imposed on B2C operators, not on B2B providers. Nevertheless, from a practical point of view, a B2C operator may require certain data from a B2B provider in order for the operator to fulfill its own reporting obligations (this of course depends on the specific software to be provided, the transaction with the operator, etc.).

There are no legal requirements in the sense that the software has to be certified for a Class 2 license in Romania.

Again, from a practical/commercial point of view, once a provider gets a Class 2 license, B2C operators can request certifications from the provider so that they can run the software on their platforms.

In this regard, the key point to consider is that the Romanian Regulatory Authority accepts certificates issued by testing laboratories with the necessary Class 2 license in Romania. A complete list of Class 2 licensees is available on the regulator’s website here.

The licensing process is completely paper-based, so the key factor affecting the timeline is how quickly we receive the necessary documents from the client.

All official documents must be apostilled and must be sent to us in the original (because the submission to the Romanian regulatory authority is done on paper). Further, all documents in a foreign language must be translated into Romanian (we can assist the client in this process).

In addition, the company applying for a license must first undergo fiscal registration in Romania. This is a purely administrative step where the company is assigned a tax registration number, which is necessary to pay the license fee. In essence, this tax number works as a company identifier, so when a payment is made to the Romanian state budget, the tax authority can allocate the appropriate payment on behalf of the company.

As for the term for obtaining such a license, the general term is 30 calendar days from the date of submission of all required documents and information to the National Gambling Authority.

However, in practice this deadline is not always respected, and additional delays usually occur (i.e. the National Gambling Authority may request additional documents or additional clarifications of the submitted documents).

The license is issued for 10 years. 

If a company operates from abroad and does not have a local presence in Romania, there is no corporate tax or gambling tax in Romania. Only the fees above need to be paid.

In case of setting up a local company, we will provide legal services for the drafting of corporate documentation for its registration (drafting of articles of association, resolution of the governing body, various affidavits, lease agreements/other contracts for the registered local office, review of documentation related to the ultimate beneficial owners, etc.) and for the registration procedure at the Romanian Commercial Registry.

The time for registration of the local company is from 5 to 7 working days from the time we receive the fully executed documentation in original.

Nevertheless, as it was written above, the registration of a company in Romania is not obligatory.