“The Court’s decision of September 5 caused new problems without satisfactorily resolving the addressed issue. The semantic equivalence of the names ‘Romanian language’ and ‘Moldovan language’ was long ago established by the Moldovan legislation. It was to be confirmed at constitutional level so as to deal with practical problems,” said the executive director of the Association for Participatory Democratic (ADEPT) Igor Botan, who is the author of the comment.
According to him, in the described context it should be noted that permanent political struggles over the name of the official language between the supporters of statehood and unionists have been fought in Moldova for over 25 years. The examination by the CC of the relevant challenges is only an episode showing that the essence of the problem does not reside in the name of the official language, but rather in the implications of the statements in favor of one of the names of the official language.
Igor Botan said it is evident that the prevailing of the Declaration of Independence over the Constitution makes impossible any kind of political decisions on a possible accession to a federation of states, including the EU, in the eventuality of the adoption of a federative model. Moreover, Moldova’s union with Romania becomes impossible. No decision by the legislature or the sovereign people, by a referendum, can in principle ‘beat’ the ‘eternity clause’ conferred by the CC on the Declaration of Independence.
The author says that under article 26(7) of the law on the Constitutional Court, the decisions of the CC have only a future effect, while the problems deriving from the CC decision are deeply anchored in the past, the mentioned documents and relations needing to be reviewed.
On December 5, the CC pronounced on two challenges over article 13 of the Constitution, which says that Moldovan is the official language. It ruled that the text of the Declaration of Independence, which says that Romanian is the official language, is constitutional and prevails over the text of the Constitution.
