The EU's commissioner for multilingualism, a Romanian, Leonard Orban, has asked EU officials to avoid references to the "Moldovan language". The move followed a bitter reaction by Romania to the inclusion of the phrase in two recent agreements signed by the EU and Moldova which do not require ratification by all 27 members of the bloc. Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu had said on October 16 that Romania will not ratify any EU document mentioning the "Moldovan language" because the phrase is "purely political". Bucharest argues that the few differences between linguistic usage in the two countries do not warrant the view that Moldovan speech amounts to a distinct language.
