The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has denied registration to a group affiliated with the fugitive politician Ilan Shor seeking a national referendum on Moldova’s foreign policy and neutral status.

The Electoral Code requires a group of citizens willing to initiate a referendum to first hold a larger assembly and then delegate at least 100 people out of its participants to act as the “initiative group”. But the CEC says that when it checked the 110-member list filed by the initiative group against the list of the 682 people attending the assembly, it could find a match for only 84 members.

Moreover, the CEC underlined that the law forbids the initiation of referenda during an ongoing state of emergency or 120 days after such state is over.