The new draft Law is intended to design a modern and comprehensive legal framework for public participation in decision-making. The draft Law on Public Participation seeks to empower citizens and stakeholders across the entire decision-making cycle, introducing mechanisms such as early-stage consultations, civic initiatives, and a central digital platform for engagement. On 16 March 2026, the Government concluded the first round of public consultations, giving civil society an opportunity to highlight key gaps and propose improvements to strengthen accountability, inclusiveness, and the effectiveness of the new framework.
Policy context of the draft law on Public Participation
In March, the Moldovan government concluded the first round of public consultations on the new draft Law on Public Participation in the decision-making process. The draft Law was developed by the State Chancellery, with early-stage support from experts of the Council of Europe (through the project “Promoting Media Freedom in Moldova”) and with the assistance of a dedicated working group, composed of 53 representatives from central public authorities and civil society. The working group was established in early 2025 and carried out several meetings throughout the year. The civil society representatives in the working group deserve credit for persuading the Government, at an early stage, of the need to draft a new law, rather than merely adopting a set of amendments that would have only modified the current Law on transparency in decision-making 239/2008. The Law from 2008 is viewed as outdated.
The draft law aims to implement several key policy commitments under Moldova’s European integration agenda, including actions set out in the National Programme for EU Accession, as well as relevant roadmaps on the functioning of democratic institutions and public administration reform. It also contributes to the implementation of the Civil Society Development Programme 2024–2027 and the Open Government Action Plan. More broadly, the initiative seeks to align national legislation with European standards on public participation, in particular with Recommendation (EU) 2023/2836 on promoting the effective involvement of citizens and civil society organisations in public policy-making processes.
Advancing a modern legal framework for public participation in decision-making
The draft Law on Public Participation in the decision-making process seeks to establish a modern and comprehensive legal framework regulating the involvement of citizens and stakeholders in the decision-making process. Unlike the current Law on transparency in decision-making 239/2008, the legislative initiative shifts the focus from merely ensuring transparency to enabling active, continuous, and structured participation. The draft law covers the entire decision-making cycle, from policy initiation to adoption, and introduces key concepts such as early-stage participation, inclusion of underrepresented groups, as well as new mechanisms, including civic initiative and the use of the digital platform particip.gov.md as a central consultation tool.
Substantively, the draft:
- Strengthens the rights of stakeholders, including the right to participate, to submit recommendations, and to receive reasoned responses.
- Establishes clearer obligations for public authorities, including the duty to organise public consultations and to justify their decisions.
- Introduces a more standardised approach to the decision-making process by setting minimum rules and deadlines, which may help reduce existing inconsistencies across institutions.
- Aims to align Moldovan legislation with international standards on open government and public participation.
Civil society concerns and priority recommendations for strengthening the draft law
The proposals put forward by civil society do not challenge the overall concept of the law; rather, they highlight several key areas for intervention aimed at strengthening its binding nature and effectiveness. The synthesis and conclusions of the public consultations have not yet been published, but the available contributions point to a range of gaps, along with proposed remedies. Overall, civil society’s recommendations converge around three key pillars: clearer obligations, effective oversight, and meaningful, inclusive participation. In this context, several priority proposals stand out:
- Introducing real accountability mechanisms, including explicit sanctions for non-compliance with participation procedures, the establishment of independent oversight (e.g. a supervisory authority), and the right to challenge decisions adopted without proper consultation.
- Explicitly extending the law’s provisions to Parliament, which currently does not consistently apply transparency and participation standards and is governed by multiple overlapping legal acts.
- Strengthening the civic initiative mechanism by setting realistic thresholds for initiating proposals, establishing clear review deadlines, and obliging authorities to act on initiatives rather than merely “consider” them. The introduction of the civic initiative is an innovative element, but its effectiveness depends on procedural details that are not yet fully clarified.
- Ensuring genuinely inclusive participation through clear standards on accessibility, inclusion, and representativeness, including targeted outreach to affected, minority, and underrepresented groups, as well as defined representativeness criteria. while inclusion is acknowledged in the draft, it is not sufficiently operationalised.
- Improving the functionality of the digital participation platform, particularly for local public authorities.
Another key critique is that the draft law focuses primarily on participation in decision-making, without extending participation mechanisms to the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of public policies.
The adoption of the draft law by Parliament is planned for October 2026. This provides a window of opportunity to refine and improve the draft, but progress will need to be swift and well-coordinated to ensure meaningful changes will be incorporated before the legislative deadline.