Parliament adopted a bill to withdraw the Soviet-type passports from circulation from September 1 in the first reading, IPN reports.

Until September 1, the persons holding such passports will be able to apply for identity cards without paying the mandatory state tax.

Deputy Minister of Justice Nicolae Esanu said that voting with Soviet-type passports in the next elections will be impossible. In this connection, Liberal lawmaker Valeriu Munteanu stated that Moldova is the only former Soviet country where symbols and vestiges of the USSR are still used.

The Communist faction didn’t support the bill, saying it was submitted for electoral purposes in order to deprive the people of the right to vote. The Communists proposed replacing the term of September 1, 2014 with January 1, 2015, but their proposal was rejected.

Currently, about 220,000 people hold Soviet-type passports in Moldova. Most of these people were born before 1945.