Nationality will not be indicated in civil status documents

The term ‘nationality’ will be removed from a number of civil status documents such as the birth or marriage certificates. The ethnic origin will be written in the birth certificate at the request of the parents or the holder who turned 16, in both of the cases based on an own responsibility statement. Relevant amendments to the civil status documents were approved by the legislature in first reading, Info-Prim Neo reports. ”The term ‘nationality’ creates confusion among our people and the foreigners as in most of the countries it is equivalent to ‘citizenship’. For example, the passports of the French citizens show the French nationality. This means they are French citizens, not French ethnics,” explained Deputy Minister of Justice Vladimir Grosu. He said such a bill was needed as Moldova was earlier convicted by the ECHR for banning a Moldovan citizen from modifying the nationality in civil status documents from Moldovan into Romanian. Communist MP Sergiu Sirbu expressed his indignation at the fact that the Moldovans will be able to choose any ethnicity. “If a person wants to write in the birth certificate that he is an alien, can you refuse him? There is no list of the ethnic groups. So how will you determine if the ethnicity asked for by a person exists?” asked the MP. The Ministry of Justice’s rapporteur said the authorities will write only the existing types of ethnicity, while the applications for imaginary ethnicity will be rejected.