On 19 October 2012, the European Court for Human Rights pronounced a judgment in cases Catan and 27 others v. Moldova and Russia; Caldare and 42 others v. Moldova and Russia; Cercavschi and 98 others v. Moldova and Russia. The applicants are teachers, pupils, and parents from three schools with teaching in Latin alphabet from the Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova.
This Judgment found the violation of Article 2 of Protocol 1 – the Right to Education. The authorities of the Russian Federation were declared accountable for this violation.
The Judgment of the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court has not been executed so far.
Three years have passed since the Judgment was pronounced and Maria Robu, headmaster of “Alexandru cel Bun” Theoretical Lyceum from Tighina, states that “importance of the Judgment is not in providing pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, but in the acknowledgement of the fact that the Russian Federation was violating the right to education. We are realistic and never believed that Russia would meet its payment obligations on time. Now the local authorities still keep us under pressure, financial one this time. The expenses for the lease of the building are high and always keep us tense. Tiraspol administration, through us, puts pressure on Chisinau authorities, too.”
Eugenia Halus, headmaster of “Evrika” Theoretical Lyceum from Ribnita talked about the difficult conditions of lyceum operation, since 2004 when they were left without any premises. “When we resorted to ECtHR, we did not count on pecuniary damages, but rather wanted the entire world to know about the unlawfulness to which the Romanian language teaching schools are subjected in the Transnistrian region. At that point we trusted that the situation of the schools will change for better. Regretfully, absolutely nothing changed and the situation of the schools became even more difficult. The premises of our lyceum were not given back to us, premises for which millions of lei were allocated from the State Budget and now everything is in a disastrous condition. As time passes by, the situation becomes even more complicated because parents who could have enrolled their children to our lyceum lose the trust in the future of this school, given the schooling conditions and the continuous anxiety and uncertainty. More and more children go to study in the Russian language teaching schools, being attracted by the conditions they provide, while our school looks like a deserted shack.”
During the three years, Promo-LEX Association kept monitoring the situation and inform the relevant international institutions and the public on the situation of Latin alphabet teaching schools, including by means of the campaign Save the schools from Transnistria.
Currently the execution of ECtHR Judgment is on the agenda of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.