“The European Commission is looking into a possible state aid at the National Lottery, while we are trying to determine whether any laws have been breached,” Bogdan Chiritoiu said.
Last year, the Commission has launched an investigation concerning a possible masked state aid at the Romanian Lottery. The Commission is analyzing whether the government has granted state aid to the gambling company to cover damages to the state budget caused by a series of contracts signed with Greek companies Intralot, Lotrom and Intracom.
The Competition Council has opened its own probe into the matter. Additionally, the antitrust regulator is analyzing the local gambling laws to determine whether the video lottery system is rightfully classified in the gambling category, for which the National Lottery has exclusive rights, or it falls into the slot machines category.
“There is suspicion that other companies are not allowed to access the market,” Chiritoiu said.
He said the Council also expects to complete several other investigations in 2013, including probes into the food retail market, the electronics and home appliance retail market and into possible excessive card fees charged by Visa and Mastercard.
Additionally, the antitrust regulators will conduct a survey regarding the local energy market and another one regarding the infrastructure market, Chiritoiu said.
“After that, we plan to complete a recently launched probe into the pharmaceuticals market,” he added.