Moldova is set to become one of the few countries in the Eastern Partnership region to transpose the EU's landmark anti-SLAPP Directive into national law. It would offer journalists, human rights defenders (HRDS), and civil society organisations (CSOs) new legal shields against strategic lawsuits designed to silence them. The Ministry of Justice submitted the draft anti-SLAPP law for public consultation, introducing fast-track dismissal mechanisms, financial guarantees, and meaningful remedies for victims of legal harassment. Yet the draft has already sparked debate. CSOs warn that the Government is conflating two distinct legislative commitments - anti-SLAPP protection and a HRD framework - into a single instrument, risking that the latter, which requires a dedicated law of its own, will remain unaddressed.
Draft anti-SLAPP law up for public consultation
On the 7th of April 2026, the Ministry of Justice submitted for public consultation a draft law aimed at combating strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs. The initiative implements Moldova's obligations under EU Directive 2024/1069 on protecting persons engaged in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings. It also responds to specific commitments under the Government's Roadmap on Rule of Law, as well as the National Programme for EU Accession 2025–2029,and the Democratic Institutions Roadmaps (Government Decisions no. 275/2025 and no. 276/2025).
SLAPPs are legal proceedings initiated to intimidate, harass, and financially exhaust journalists, defenders, whistleblowers, civic activists and CSOs. Unlike legitimate litigation, these proceedings exploit the very length and cost of judicial processes as a weapon, creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression and public accountability across society.
New tools against legal harassment proposed in the draft law
The draft law introduces a comprehensive set of procedural safeguards against manifestly unfounded claims and abusive court proceedings in civil litigation. Its core provisions amend the Law on freedom of expression no. 64/2010, the Contravention Code, the Law on state-guaranteed legal aid, the Law on state fees, and the Code of Civil Procedure.
In practical terms, defendants facing potential SLAPP proceedings would gain access to three new procedural tools:
- The right to request that plaintiffs deposit a financial guarantee covering estimated legal costs;
- A fast-track mechanism to have manifestly unfounded claims dismissed before the start of judicial hearings, with the burden of proof shifting to the plaintiff to demonstrate the claim is not manifestly unfounded; and
- A set of remedies in cases where abusive proceedings are established, including full recovery of legal costs, compensation for material and moral damages, financial penalties between 50 and 12,500 Euro, and the possibility of publishing the court ruling in the media at the plaintiff's expense.
Two new key concepts are also introduced:
- Public participation - broadly defined to encompass any statement or activity by natural or legal persons in the exercise of freedoms of expression, arts, science, assembly, or association that concerns a matter of public interest, and
- Abusive court proceedings against public participation - identifying five key indicators of abuse, including power imbalance between parties, disproportionate claims, multiple concurrent proceedings, intimidation tactics, and bad-faith procedural manoeuvres.
The draft also removes two contravention offences related to defamation from the Contravention Code, fully decriminalising defamation in line with Council of Europe recommendations. Additionally, persons intending to file a fast-track dismissal request would become eligible for state-guaranteed legal aid, and victims of abusive foreign court proceedings would be able to seek damages before Moldovan courts.
The anti-SLAPP draft is a welcome step, but merging two distinct legislative commitments risks leaving HRDs unprotected
While civil society broadly welcomes the anti-SLAPP draft law, the Ministry of Justice approach raises a significant concern. The explanatory note accompanying the draft claims that the draft law also addresses the protection of defenders. Yet the actual content of the draft contains only anti-SLAPP provisions, with no dedicated mechanism for HRD protection.
This matters because the Government has made two distinct commitments. Action 5.5 of the Rule of Law Roadmap and Action 7.1 of the Democratic Institutions Roadmap both cited as legal basis for the current draft, were understood to include separate legislative tracks, one for anti-SLAPP mechanisms (targeted for December 2027) and one for a comprehensive HRDs protection framework (targeted for December 2026). Conflating both objectives within a single legislative instrument risks leaving the HRD commitment unaddressed.
HRDs in Moldova face threats that go well beyond SLAPP litigation. As documented in the Radiography of Attacks on NGOs and Human Rights Defenders by LRCM, HRDs face coordinated delegitimisation campaigns, online harassment, death threats against investigative journalists, illegal detention in Transnistria, and growing use of AI to amplify disinformation.
These risks require a dedicated legal framework, tailored to the full spectrum of HRDs vulnerabilities, not just freedom of expression.
A coalition of CSOs has called on the Ministry of Justice to remove the HRDs references from the anti-SLAPP draft's explanatory note, and to launch a separate legislative process for a dedicated law on the recognition and protection of human rights defenders. The HRDs protection legislation should be developed through an inclusive working group and structured public consultations, drawing on the model law developed by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).
Anti-SLAPP draft law represents a meaningful and timely step toward protecting the civic space and aligning national legislation with EU standards. If adopted as planned, it would offer journalists, activists, and CSOs important new tools against legal harassment. However, the current conflation of two distinct policy commitments, anti-SLAPP protection and a comprehensive HRDs framework, risks leaving human rights defenders without the dedicated safeguards they need and that the Government has committed to deliver. Both legislative tracks are important, and both deserve full attention. Keeping them clearly separate is a guarantee that neither will be shortchanged.