According to amendments to the law on civil status acts, which entered into force on April 21, civil status certificates will be drawn up “in a language other than Moldovan”.
The amendments were adopted by parliament last week in order to bring the law into line with the provisions of the legislation on the functioning of languages on the territory of Moldova. After the victory of the Communist Party in the 2001 parliamentary elections, deputies decided to allow the registration of civil status acts also in Russian. However, the opposition challenged this decision in the Constitutional Court, which concluded that “equating the Russian language with the state language contradicts the constitution.” In this situation, parliament decided that it should not specify other languages in which, at the request of the holder, civil status acts may be drawn up. Earlier, the Constitutional Court of Moldova also recognized as unconstitutional an amendment to the legislation that allowed the duplication of names of settlements, streets, and various geographical designations into Russian.
A year ago, the Constitutional Court rejected the legislative initiative of a group of communist deputies who proposed granting the Russian language the status of a state language, in accordance with the election promises of the Communist Party. Subsequently, the deputies decided not to insist on this proposal, since work on the draft of a new constitution of a federal state will soon begin, where it is planned to resolve the issue of granting the Russian language the status of a state language.