The decision of the Constitutional Court (CC) that the language spoken in Moldova is Romanian will create dissension in society, but will have no major effects. Not many people will take to the streets to protests, vice director of the Institute of Juridical and Political Researches of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova Victor Juc and vice director of the Institute for Political Analysis and Consultancy “Politicon” Ion Tabarta told IPN.

“The Constitutional Court did nothing but provide legal shell for a historical truth. The Academy of Sciences in 1994 established that the language spoken in Moldova is Romanian. Some of the opposition parties, Russian-language speakers and native people will oppose this decision. Some will say that the authorities, instead of dealing with important things, focus on linguistic problems. There will be dissension and dissatisfaction as the problem of identity hasn’t been solved in a poly-ethnic and multilingual society as Moldova’s,” said Victor Juc.

There is no party in Moldova – either in power or in the opposition – that would be able to bring together a large number of people to stage large-scale protests, said the researcher of the Academy of Sciences. “Small protests involving several hundred or thousand people are inevitable. The parties will not hesitate to gain political dividends and to take the people out, but these events will not have very serious effects. Now these parties do not have other reasons to mount protests and will thus use this decision,” stated Victor Juc.

Ion Tabarta is waiting to see the attitude of the political parties, if they obey the decision and modify the name of the official language in the Constitution. “The Socialists and the Communists will surely criticize this decision. There is linguistic balance in society and I don’t think that the decision will have major effects,” he added.

The Declaration of Independence, which says that Romanian is the official language of Moldova, is constitutional. The Constitutional Court pronounced on the matter following two challenges filed over Article 13 of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court decided that the text of the Declaration of Independence prevails over the text of the Constitution, which provides that the official language is Moldovan, based on the Latin script.