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Moldova court upholds ban on dual citizenship for parliament members

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of Moldova has upheld a recent law barring certain government officials from holding dual citizenship. The controversial law no. 273 was passed by the Communist Party in April 2008 and, among other provisions, requires citizens to relinquish foreign passports before taking a seat in parliament. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in November that the law violated the right to free elections mandated in Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case was referred to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR and will be heard on September 16, 2009. According to the Central Election Commission of Moldova, about half of the non-Communist candidates who were elected to parliament in April hold dual citizenship. The population of the area in which Moldova is located lost Romanian citizenship after being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. In April, the Constitutional Court ordered the nation's Central Election Commission to conduct a recount of the controversial parliamentary election in which the Communist Party won a majority of seats. Later that month, the Constitutional Court validated the recount results. Opposition groups claimed that falsified voter registration rolls allowed government officials to fabricate votes and boycotted the recount, opting instead to check voter lists for irregularities.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).