The European Court of Human Rights awarded €1,500 compensation for non-pecuniary damage and €3,500 court costs in a case in which it identified a breach of the applicant's right to respect for private life as a result of the authorities' refusal to register his ethnicity as declared by him, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to lawyer Janeta Hanganu, applicant Mihai Ciubotaru claimed that there had been a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights account of the fact that when collecting and recording information concerning his identity the authorities had refused to register his Romanian ethnic identity and forced on him an ethnic identity with which he did not identify. The applicant strongly disagreed with the theory promoted by the Moldovan authorities that there was a Moldovan ethnicity distinct from the Romanian ethnicity. However, even assuming that the Romanians were an ethnic minority in the Republic of Moldova, as alleged by the Government, he should have been allowed to enjoy the right provided for in section 2 of the Law on National Minorities and to be able to chose freely whether he belonged to that minority or not, the Court ruled. In the applicant's opinion, the State's policy of imposing by force the Moldovan ethnic identity on him and on others amounted to xenophobia as it was not in accordance with any democratic values and did not promote the value of pluralism, inherent in a democratic society. The applicant denied the Government's argument that he needed to be indicated as an ethnic Romanian in the records in order to obtain Romanian citizenship. He argued that according to the law of Romania, Romanian citizenship was issued to former Romanian citizens and their descendants irrespective of ethnic origin. The applicant contended that the State had placed on him an excessive and insurmountable burden by requesting documentary evidence of his Romanian origin in circumstances in which it was common ground that almost all the representatives of the majority ethnic group had been deliberately recorded as ethnic Moldovans during the Soviet era. Moreover, the applicant had been placed in a position of substantial disadvantage vis-à-vis the Government, which did not have to produce any evidence of his Moldovan ethnic identity.