„No more” privileged position for the Russian language in Moldova

On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court (here available in Russian) issued a landmark decision that turned down the law on the languages’ functioning, adopted in a rush the Socialists Party and promulgated by the outgoing pro-Russian president Igor Dodon. As a consequence, Russian may lose its privileged role among other minority languages.

Some international media, especially the Russian ones, misinterpreted the Court’s decision insinuating that the Russian language usage will not have the status of inter-ethnic language anymore. That’s not precisely what the Moldovan Constitutional Court concluded.

This commentary explains what has happened and what exactly has decided the Constitutional Court: