Ministry of Justice Project: No More Normative Acts Issued in Russian Language

The Ministry of Justice proposes a set of amendments to national legislation to eliminate the obligation to translate a number of documents into Russian. The relevant draft decision has been submitted for public discussion. Thus, it is proposed to amend the Law on the Procedure of Publication and Entry into Force of Official Documents, according to which all documents published in the Monitorul Oficial “shall be translated into Russian and other languages in accordance with the law”. Therefore, documents, decrees and decisions of the authorities will be published exclusively in Romanian. At the same time, the Rules of Procedure of Parliament will be amended to stipulate that “the draft legislative act shall be submitted in Romanian together with its translation into Russian”. If the initiative of the Ministry of Justice is approved, the draft laws and/or legislative proposals submitted by MPs will be introduced only in Romanian. It is also suggested to abolish the provisions according to which “draft legislative acts and legislative proposals submitted by deputies shall be submitted in Romanian or Russian, and the Parliament Secretariat shall ensure their translation into the respective language”. The authorities propose that in territories where people belonging to a national minority constitute a significant part of the population, the documents of local public administration bodies should be published in Romanian and, as the case may be, with a translation into the language of the respective minority. In this regard, in ATU Gagauzia, documents will no longer be issued in Russian, as it is practiced now, but only in Romanian and Gagauz languages. “The translation of normative acts into Russian is necessary to ensure accessibility of Russian-speaking people to the normative framework. However, the Russian version of the texts has no legal force, or, in case of discrepancies between the text in Romanian and its translation into another language, the provisions established by the text in the state language - Romanian - prevail, since, first of all, in this case we have a translation, not an official legal text,” the authorities said. Thus, the Russian translation of normative acts is proposed to be published only in the State Register of Legal Acts. In this regard, the public authority designated to adopt, approve or issue a normative act will ensure its translation into Russian within 1 month from the date of publication in the Monitorul Oficial, but not later than its entry into force.