Home > 1.2.1 Equal voting rights > MOLDOVA - Joint Opinión on the Law for Amending and Completing Certain Legislative Acts (Electoral System for the Election of the Parliament)
 
 
 
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Paragraph 41
 

National minority representation is a recurrent topic in the ODIHR and Venice Commission joint opinions on the electoral law of the Republic of Moldova. According to the 2014 census, 24.9% of the population identified themselves as having an ethnicity other than Moldovan. The June 2017 Joint Opinion addressed that the draft law in its initial version did not prescribe any single-member constituencies specific to the Gagauz ethnic group in the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia. The recommendation to create single-member constituencies exclusively for the Gagauz Territorial Unit has been followed. Article 74(4) g) prescribes that single-member constituencies established within this autonomous territorial unit shall not exceed its borders or be mixed with localities outside the borders. This led to creating two constituencies in Gagauzia - one of them having the highest number of registered voters in the country. Giving one seat to the Bulgarian community in Taraclia with 35,082 voters appears justified under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.