The former is named in the Declaration of Independence of Moldova, and is supported by the country's Academy of Sciences and Constitutional Court.

The 1989 state language law of the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic declared that Moldovan, written in the Latin script, was the sole state language, intending it to serve as a primary means of communication among all citizens of the republic.

Even after shifting to the Latin alphabet, some Moldovan officials continue to insist that the designated "state language" is an east-Romance idiom somehow separate from Romanian.

The two had together an increase of 0.5% compared to the 2014 census, and there was a significant increase in the share of self-declared speakers of Romanian as their usually spoken language, of 9.5%, as well as a decrease in the share of the self-declared speakers of "Moldovan" as their usually spoken language, of 9%, compared to the 2014 census.

The proposed law was introduced by a group of members of the "Action and Solidarity Party" fraction.

[16] Russian is one of the minority languages recognized in Moldova,[17] and since Soviet times remains widely used on many levels of the society and the state.

A policy document adopted in 2003 by the Moldovan parliament considers that "for Moldova, Moldovan-Russian bilingualism is characteristic".

[18] On 21 January 2021 the Constitutional Court declared a law passed by parliament that would have made Russian the "language for communication between ethnic communities" unconstitutional.