About 530 valid diplomatic passports are now in circulation. The given document can be used both in Moldova and in other states. It offers a number of privileges and is obtained according to special procedures, IPN reports, quoting RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service.

The law on identity documents in the national passport system stipulates over 30 categories of persons who can obtain diplomatic passports. Among these are the President, Speaker, Prime Minister, MPs and Cabinet members, prosecutor general, presidents of the Constitutional Court, the Superior Council of Magistracy and the Supreme Court of Justice, ombudspersons, National Bank governor, directors of the Customs Service and the Security and Intelligence Service.

All Moldova’s ambassadors and personnel of diplomatic missions, their spouses and their minor children and children younger than 23 who study abroad and are not married and the former Heads of State, Premiers, Speakers and their spouses are also entitled to diplomatic passports.

The holders of diplomatic passports benefit from a liberalized visa regime with a series of states with which bilateral agreements were signed or that approved such a regime unilaterally, pay lower taxes for visas or are exempted from these, benefit from simplified checking procedures at airports and customs posts, but only if the country of destination or the transited country adopted relevant special conditions.

“The diplomatic passport gives a special status to the holder that is privileged by customary international law. But the holder does not automatically enjoy immunity. This normally appears when the diplomat is accredited or following an official invitation, when the person gains immunity in the given country,” explained the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.