The growth markets
The markets of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean are where European online gambling is growing fastest and where regulation is changing most often. Several licensed online gambling in the late 2010s or in 2020 (the Czech Republic and Poland in 2017, Switzerland in 2019, Greece and Ukraine in 2020), many have rewritten their laws since, and the pattern that emerges is a compressed version of Western Europe's: license, tax, then tighten advertising and player protection as the market matures. Ireland, at the other end of the continent, is building a regime from scratch and shows what a regulator designed in the 2020s looks like. This lesson covers the region briefly, market by market, and closes with the direction of European regulation as a whole.
Poland and the Czech Republic
Poland's 2017 amendment to its Gambling Act, in force from April 2017, licensed private operators for online betting only, reserved every other form of online gambling, casino and poker included, to the state monopoly (promotional lotteries aside), and blocked unlicensed sites through a public register of domains kept by the finance minister, with payment providers barred from serving them. Betting is taxed at 12 per cent of stakes rather than of revenue, a base that leaves operators little margin for competitive odds.
The Czech Republic's 2017 Gambling Act opened online licensing to operators based in the Czech Republic or elsewhere in the EU or EEA, taxed by product (35 per cent for lotteries and technical games, online and land-based, and, from January 2024, 30 per cent for betting, live games and bingo, up from 23 per cent), and introduced a national exclusion register, mandatory identity verification and player limits. Amendments in force from January 2024 extended blocking from websites and payment accounts to apps, banned risky bonuses and reworked players' self-limits. The Czech market is one of the region's most orderly, and the finance ministry's published list of blocked sites held about 3,500 websites in September 2026.
Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary
Romania licenses online gambling through the Oficiul Național pentru Jocuri de Noroc (ONJN), with class I licences for operators and class II licences for suppliers of software, platforms and hosting, payment processors, affiliates and other service companies, a model that licenses more of the supply chain than most in Europe. Law 141/2025 set the annual authorisation tax for remote class I operators at 30 per cent of gambling revenue, with a minimum of 480,000 euros a year, on top of licence fees, and barred class II licensees from serving unlicensed operators. An emergency ordinance of 2023 (OUG 82/2023), approved and amended by Law 107/2024 with effect from 28 April 2024, required licensees to be Romanian companies or EU, EEA or Swiss companies with a permanent establishment in Romania, and banned unsolicited electronic gambling advertising and outdoor gambling advertising larger than 35 square metres a panel. The regulatory changes have been frequent enough that the licence conditions in force should always be checked against the current text.
Bulgaria licenses through the National Revenue Agency, which took over from the dissolved State Commission on Gambling on 8 August 2020. Online betting and similar games pay a variable fee of 20 per cent of the difference between stakes and winnings on top of licence fees; amendments in 2024 banned gambling advertising on radio and television (except for state-run games), in print and electronic media including websites, and in public places, leaving billboards away from schools, venue facades and sports sponsorship; and the NRA publishes a blacklist of unlicensed gambling websites. Hungary, where remote gambling had been a monopoly of the state operator, opened remote gambling to licensed operators established in the EEA from 1 January 2023, with a gaming tax of 15 per cent of net gaming revenue; online casino remains reserved to companies holding a land-based casino concession in Hungary.
The Balkans, Greece and Cyprus
Croatia amended its Games of Chance Act in April 2025 to ban gambling advertising online, on radio and television and in electronic publications between six in the morning and eleven at night (operators had until 1 January 2026 to comply), to create a national register of excluded players run by the Croatian Institute of Public Health, and to set annual fees of 600,000 euros for online casino and 400,000 euros for online betting. Serbia licenses online operators under its 2020 Law on Games of Chance, with a monthly fee of 15 per cent of gross gaming revenue (25 per cent for live dealer games) and a 500,000-euro deposit or bank guarantee; Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia have regimes of their own.
Greece brought in a full online licensing regime in 2020 under the Hellenic Gaming Commission, giving operators already serving the market under the earlier transitional arrangements a month to apply. The State takes 35 per cent of gross gaming revenue; licences cost 3 million euros for betting and 2 million euros for other online games, each for seven years; the regulation constrains products (a maximum stake of 2 euros on RNG casino games, at least three seconds between game cycles and a 500,000-euro jackpot cap); and every licensee must offer self-exclusion. Cyprus licenses online betting only, under the National Betting Authority: its 2019 Betting Law defines online casino games to include online roulette and online poker and makes providing them an offence, a stricter line than France, which excludes online casino but licenses online poker.
Ukraine and the region's east
Ukraine legalised gambling in July 2020, repealing the ban it had imposed in 2009, and licensed online casino, online betting and online poker under a commission. A law in force from April 2025 moved regulation to a central executive body, and the government created the State Agency PlayCity for the role; PlayCity is digitising licensing, building a state online monitoring system and blocking illegal casinos. The market has developed under wartime conditions, and the 2025 law confined gambling advertising to listed channels, allowing it on television and radio only between eleven at night and six in the morning. The Baltic states run licensed markets of their own: Lithuania's parliament voted in November 2024 to ban gambling advertising from July 2025, with transitional exceptions for sport until 2028; Latvia and Estonia license online gambling too.
Switzerland
Switzerland's Money Gaming Act, in force since 2019, permits online casino games only through the country's land-based casinos, which need a concession extension from the Federal Council, and sports betting only through the two lottery companies, Swisslos and Loterie Romande; foreign operators are blocked by DNS blocklists kept by the casino regulator, the ESBK, and by Gespa. The model, land-based anchoring in the Belgian pattern with a monopoly for betting, confines the licensed online market to the casinos (ten had online platforms by March 2026) and depends on constant blocking: the ESBK had 580 new domains blocked in 2025, the first year of a new concession period running to 2044.
Ireland: a regime built in the 2020s
Ireland's gambling law rested on Acts including the Betting Act 1931 and the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956 until the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, which repeals them and created the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI), formally established in March 2025, with a licensing regime for betting, gaming and lotteries, online and land-based, phased in from 2026. The Act's design shows what a regulator writes when it can see everyone else's experience: a national exclusion register, a ban on accepting payment by credit card or giving credit, a watershed on broadcast and on-demand gambling advertising between half past five in the morning and nine at night, powers to prescribe the content, frequency and duration of advertising, a prohibition on offering inducements to a person or specific group, a social impact fund financed by annual contributions from licensees, and a licensing structure that covers B2B suppliers and remote operators. Remote betting licences commenced on 1 July 2026, with in-person betting licences to follow later in the year and existing licences from the Revenue Commissioners, the Garda and the courts continuing until the relevant sections commence; for operators it is the newest large licence in Europe and the one whose conditions are being written now.
The direction of European regulation
Across every market in this course, the same measures arrive in the same order. Licensing replaces monopoly or prohibition, with tax on gross gaming revenue and a national self-exclusion register. Advertising is then restricted: role models, watersheds, sponsorship, volume, and near-total bans in Italy, Belgium and Lithuania, with a ban on untargeted advertising in the Netherlands. Player protection is centralised: identity verification against national systems, deposit limits (a cross-operator limit of 1,000 euros a month as the rule in Germany, 200 euros a week per site in Belgium, a limit every online player must set in Sweden), duty-of-care monitoring, and cross-operator systems like Germany's LUGAS. Products are constrained: stake limits and spin speeds for slots in Britain, Germany and Greece; bonus restrictions in Sweden and the Netherlands and a bonus ban in Belgium; credit bans in Britain, Sweden and Ireland. Tax rises: Britain's remote gaming duty to 40 per cent in April 2026, the Netherlands to 37.8, Denmark to 28, Sweden to 22, the Czech Republic's betting and live-game rate from 23 to 30. Suppliers are licensed: Sweden, Denmark and Romania license them, Ireland's Act provides for B2B licences, and the trend is spreading. And enforcement hardens: blocklists, payment blocking, action against affiliates and media, and cross-border cooperation among regulators, such as a joint statement by seven of them in November 2025.
The counter-pressure is channelisation. Every tightening produces an argument that players are leaving for unlicensed sites, evidence on both sides, and, occasionally, a concession: Germany's optional loosening of its one-euro slot stake limit from July 2026, to up to 3 or 5 euros for players over 21 until the end of 2027. The effects are watched: a June 2026 Dutch government monitor found that raising the gambling tax to 37.8 per cent had fallen far short of its revenue target, and France's government tabled and then withdrew an amendment to license online casino in October 2024. The European regime of the 2030s will be stricter than today's on protection and advertising, will license more of the supply chain, and will be judged, market by market, on whether the licensed share holds.
What to take from this lesson
Poland licenses betting only, with a stakes tax and a state casino monopoly; the Czech Republic licenses broadly at rates raised in 2024. Romania licenses operators and the whole supply chain through the ONJN with frequent changes; Bulgaria restricts advertising heavily, and Hungary opened remote gambling in 2023. Croatia's 2025 amendments tightened advertising and exclusion; Greece licenses at 35 per cent with slot restrictions; Cyprus and France exclude online casino. Ukraine moved regulation to a new agency in 2025; Lithuania banned gambling advertising from 2025. Switzerland anchors online casino to land-based concessions. Ireland's 2024 Act created the GRAI, with licensing from 2026, a credit ban, an advertising watershed and a levy. Across Europe the order is constant: license, tax, restrict advertising, centralise protection, constrain products, license suppliers, enforce, with channelisation the argument that occasionally reverses a step.