Legislation Report: Marko Tomic In respect of certification of the equipment the competent authority shall establish an exhaustive list of gaming equipment that is subject to mandatory certification and a list of subjects of certification of gaming equipment. It is prohibited to use noncertified gaming equipment. Certification of gaming equipment, which is subject to the inspection of the competent authority, is carried out in accordance with international standards by Ukrainian and / or foreign certification entities, the list of which is established by the competent authority. The use of gambling equipment that is not connected to the online monitoring system in accordance with the rules established by the competent authority is prohibited. The body of each slot machine must indicate the production number, year of manufacture, data on modification and repair (if any) and the name of the manufacturer. The use of slot machines in which the total percentage of winnings (theoretical return to the player) is set at less than 95 (ninety-five) percent is prohibited whereby the use of slot machines that are older than 2019 is not permitted.
revenues (approx. EUR 280 mio). In 2019 Government adopted an Ordinance on Implementation of General Tax Act which enabled the Ministry of Finance to sanction and prevent illegal gambling activities organized online (by means of IP address and payment blocking) in Croatia and 14 foreign organizers of online games of chance were banned from Croatian market in the course of 2019. Latest initiative of the opposition in the Croatian Parliament which was initiated in February 2020 had the aim to define that casinos and slot machine halls must be located at least 500m from kindergartens, elementary and high schools, student dorms as well as from religious objects while the 200m limitation was to apply to betting places. Further to this, minimal slot machine hall area of 100 sqm was proposed. Respective limitations were introduced in Croatia in April 2020 through an Ordinance on Spatial and Technical Conditions for Organization of Games of Chance with the exception that the above mentioned 500m limit does not apply to casinos located in 5-star hotels.
2. Croatia
3. Montenegro
Games of chance in Croatia are regulated under Act on Games of Chance which was last amended in 2014. Respective act regulates organization of games of chance in the territory of Croatia and in line with the same lottery games may be organized solely by the state owned Croatian Lottery (“Hrvatska Lutrija”) while the market is liberalized for all other aspects of gambling and sports betting. One of the main features of the act is that the organization of online gambling (including casinos) is permitted only to organizers who have “brick and mortar” presence in Croatia. Estimate for 2017 is that “grey market” in this industry in Croatia has a market share of almost 40% and amounts to HRK 2bn in Volume 16: Issue 140
Current legislation in force in Montenegro dates back to 2004 while there was an initiative from the Ministry of Finance in 2018 and 2019 for the adoption of the new act which would be aligned with most recent trends in the gaming industry and best EU practices. Based on publicly available information, no progress occurred in respect to this matter to this date. It was recently announced by the authorities that the new act should define online supervision over organizers of lotteries and casinos which currently remain out of this type of surveillance. The new act should also define lottery games and organization of the same bearing in mind that the same are not organized in the territory for the last 3 years when 27
