Justice for Shor Party

Since 2016, after Ilan Shor’s election as mayor of Orhei, the popularity of the party appears to have been deemed a threat to its political opponents, and a number of steps were taken against the party and its members. These steps include cancelling the registration of the party’s candidates for local and national elections, lifting the parliamentary immunities of the party’s Members of Parliament in order to pursue criminal investigations against them; the detention of the party’s members and their placement under house arrest and depriving the party of its funding allotment from the state budget.

On November 11, 2022, the Moldovan government submitted a notification to the Constitutional Court, requesting it to declare the Shor party as unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court held public hearings between May 10, 2023 and June 19, 2023. On June 19, 2023, by a majority ruling supported by three of the five judges, and from which two Members of the Court dissented, the Constitutional Court declared the party to be unconstitutional.

The ban on the party was presided by Judge Nicolae Roșca, who in fact is one of the founding members of Moldova’s government party, PAS party, and stood as a candidate on behalf of the PAS party in the 2019 parliamentary elections. Judge Roșca was appointed by the then government, headed by Maia Sandu and acted as President Sandu’s lawyer in a civil trial against Ilan Shor. Judge Rosca's daughter is presently President Maia Sandu’s adviser; and Judge Rosca actively participated in protests in 2016-2017, demanding Ilan Shor’s conviction on charges of bank fraud.

Despite the obvious conflict of interest, the Shor party’s request to dismiss Judge Roșca from the case was dismissed.

On September 17 the Shor party filed an application to the ECHR challenging the ban on the Party. Read more about the application here.

On March 11, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights decided to hear arguments in the case brought by the SHOR party against Moldova and called upon the Moldovan Government to respond to the challenge brought in relation to its ban on the Shor Party.

The Court indicated that, following a preliminary examination of the admissibility of the case, it has decided to give notice of the application to the Moldovan Government and invite them to submit a written statement on the facts, admissibility and the merits, by 1 July 2024.

The Court also stated that the application could constitute a “case with impact”, meaning that it may raise important issues of relevance for Moldova and/or for the Convention system as a whole.

It should be noted that the vast majority of applications to the ECHR are dismissed without being examined on the merits. In 2020, for instance, 95% of cases were declared inadmissible or struck out and only 2,000 reached the level of a court review.

Shaul Brazil, Partner at BCL Solicitors LLP in London stated that: "The applicants are pleased that the Court has accepted this case and invited the Government of Moldova to respond to our submissions, which identify several grounds to demonstrate that the ban on the SHOR Party violated the applicants’ Convention rights. We are confident that the Court will review this case objectively and on its merits.”