The Constitutional Court returned with no examination the joint initiative of the Liberal Democratic and Socialist parties on revising the Constitution

The Constitutional Court returned, with no examination of the merits, the joint application of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Socialist Party factions on approving the initiative for the revision of certain articles of the Constitution of Moldova.

The application, lodged with the Constitutional Court on 3 November 2015, concerns the amendment of Articles 78, 85 and 89 of the Constitution and refers to the election and removal from office of the President of the Republic of Moldova by universal, equal, direct, secret and freely expressed ballot.

Upon a preliminary verification of the application, without prejudice, the Court found several technical inaccuracies in the text of draft law, that in current deficient wording  render it  impossible to be examined on the merits.

In essence, the draft law contains a nonsense given that it provides for an incomprehensible contradiction on the way of enactment, by enshrining two mutually exclusive solutions: the parliamentary way and the referendum way. Thus, although the title of the draft law mentions "the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova", as the presumed authority which adopts the law on amending the Constitution, the preamble of the daft law states that it is adopted by "the people": "We, the people of the Republic Moldova, exercising directly the national sovereignty [...] adopt this law."

Under these circumstances, the Court is unable to understand the way the authors intend to make amendments to the Constitution.

Also, a sentence contained in the draft law is not finished, so that the Court is unable to understand or even infer on the intention of the authors. Thus, the sentence contained in paragraph 2 of the draft law is not finished. Therefore, there is no indication on the fate of the phrase "except the case provided in Article 78.5, and" contained in Article 85 of the Constitution, the authors of the draft law omitting to indicate whether it is excluded or replaced with another text.

Given that following the delivery of the Opinion of the Constitutional Court, no interventions are allowed in the text of the draft law on the revision of the Constitution, the Court requested the removal of the identified deficiencies.

Stemming from the reasons above, the Court returned the application. This fact shall not preclude the subsequent lodging of the draft law, following the removal of the reported technical deficiencies.

The revised draft shall be signed once again by the subjects that may initiate the revision of the Constitution, in accordance with the requirements provided for in Article 141 of the Constitution. 

This press-release is also available in Romanian.