On 19 October, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR issued the decision in the case
of Catan and Others v. the Republic of Moldova and Russia. The European Court of Human Rights
held, unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (right to
education) to the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of the Republic of Moldova,
and, by 16 votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 in respect
of the Russian Federation.
The case concerned the complaint by children and parents from the Moldovan community
in Transdniestria about the effects of a language policy adopted in 1992 and 1994 by the separatist
regime forbidding the use of the Latin alphabet in schools and the subsequent measures
taken to enforce the policy. Those measures included the forcible eviction of pupils and teachers
from Moldovan/Romanian-language schools as well as forcing the schools to close down and
reopen in different premises.