CONSTITUTIONAL COURT BLESSES BILL ON FIXING EUROPEAN INTEGRATION IN MAIN LAW

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova issued on Monday its positive conclusion on including into the Constitution a provision saying that European integration is the strategic goal of the Republic of Moldova development.

Reading out the Court’s judgment, its Chairman Tudor Pantiru said that the legislative initiative on amending the Constitution was put forward by a group of 36 Members of the Moldovan Parliament, which number was quite sufficient for putting forth such initiatives: minimum 34 MPs, or one-third of the 101-member legislative forum.

In early October, the Democrats-dominated parliamentary majority voted for forming a working group to draft a Law on including into the Constitution a provision to say that the Republic of Moldova’s strategic orientation is European integration.

The said group of deputies from the governing coalition proposed to replace the following phase from Article 1 (Item 3) of the Constitution saying that “The Republic of Moldova is a democratic and law-governed State, in which human dignity and citizen’s rights and freedoms, a free development of the personality, justice and political pluralism are supreme and guaranteed values” with the following phrase: “The Republic of Moldova is a law-governed democratic State oriented to the area of European values, in which human dignity, rights and freedoms, a free development of the human personality, justice and political pluralism are supreme and guaranteed values”.

Besides this, the amendment initiators have proposed to include a new article into the Constitution as follows: “Article 81. The European Integration. (1) The European integration of the Republic of Moldova is the strategic objective of the country’s development. (2) The procedure of the Republic of Moldova’s accession to the European Union statutory treaties is established by the Parliament by means of an organic law”.

The deputies proposed also to add the following phrase to the Preamble of the Constitution: “…respecting the country’s striving for European integration and promoting the Republic of Moldova’s orientation to the area of European democratic values…”

Having given a positive conclusion on the proposed bill in its full volume, the Constitutional Court also said that the bill is in harmony with other judgments by the Court and with the 1991 Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Moldova, according to which “by means of declaring its independence, the Republic of Moldova has torn itself away from the totalitarian Soviet area and has joined the democratic European area”.

According to the law, a bill on amending the Constitution may be considered by the Parliament in not earlier than 6 months and not later than in 12 months since the date of the Constitutional Court’s judgment. For adopting the bill, it must be supported by two-thirds of the legislature i.e. by minimum 67-of-101 deputies.

As was already reported by Infotag, last September the Chairman of the ruling Democratic Party, Vlad Plahotniuc, stated the Party’s intention to include an essential provision into the Constitutional Court – that “European integration is the strategic orientation of Moldova’s external policy”. In his words, this initiative is based on the Constitutional Court’s ruling of September 9, 2014 – that “orientation to European democratic values is the determining element of the constitutional identity of the Republic of Moldova”.