PPPDA MP Dinu Plîngău said the bill on the functioning of languages that they challenged in the Constitutional Court contains a number of provisions that discriminate against the people on grounds of the spoken language. Practically each public sector employee needs to know Russian, but this is incorrect and unconstitutional. Russian will be also required on employment, while the documents of the public authorities will have to be translated into Russian, but not everyone can cover these rather large costs. There are sufficient arguments for the Court to declare this law unconstitutional, IPN reports.

According to Dinu Plîngău, Article 10 of the Constitution stipulates the unity of people and the right to identity. By giving Russian a special status, alongside the official language, the bill on the functioning of languages violates this article.

The MP noted the assertions made by Minister of Justice Fadei Nagachevski, who said the MPs who challenged the law aim to divide society, are not true. Those who proposed and adopted this bill actually divide society. The bill was adopted without the Government’s appraisal and with the negative appraisals of the National Anticorruption Center and the Parliament’s Law Division, which said that this is unconstitutional.

“Today we saw the rather emotive reactions of Minister of Justice Fadei Nagachevski as to the fact that we go against the Russian language. This is an untruth that is bigger than the ministry he manages. If you are a citizen of the Republic of Moldova, you have equal rights regardless of the spoken language and ethnicity, alongside all the citizens in Moldova. You have rights, but also have obligations that derive from the Constitution and from other related regulations,” stated the MP.

The Constitutional Court will examine the challenge concerning the constitutionality of the law on the functioning of languages spoken on the territory of the Republic of Moldova on January 21, starting at 10am.