The town of Cornești was 180 people short of the right to merge at all. The solution its council found was to ask a neighbouring commune for two of its villages. The Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery told it that this was not possible — and ordered it to annul its own decision.
The council complied within five days. But it did not give up.
What was unlawful
The document that overturned everything appears in the body of no decision. It is a notice attached, as a second file, to the record of a decision in the State Register of Local Acts — a scanned PDF, digitally signed on 25 June.
The defect invoked is not a matter of procedure, of quorum, or of consultation. It is the perimeter itself:
The voluntary amalgamation process takes in an entire first-tier administrative-territorial unit and by no means a part of that unit, that is, a village out of a commune. Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery, notice of 25 June 2026
On 22 May, Cornești Town Council had launched the merger of the town of Cornești, the village of Cornești, and the villages of Mircești and Poiana — the last two being part of the commune of Boghenii Noi. The amalgamation law states plainly that the subjects of a merger are whole administrative-territorial units. A commune cannot be dismembered so as to hand over a village at a time.
The arithmetic behind the move
Why would a town want two villages that are not its own?
Because without them it has no right to merge at all.
The law requires the amalgamating units to add up to at least 3,000 inhabitants. On 1 January 2026, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the town of Cornești has 1,654 inhabitants and the village of Cornești 1,166. Together: 2,820.
They were 180 people short.
One calendar detail completes the picture: until 30 April 2026 the 3,000 threshold was qualified with the words “as a rule” — that is, it admitted exceptions. An amendment to the law, in force from precisely that date, removed the qualifier. The threshold became firm. Cornești voted its perimeter on 22 May — three weeks after the loophole had closed.
Three moves, in a single sitting
On 30 June the council met and passed three decisions. The order in which it passed them tells the whole story.
First, it adopted the decision accepting an initiative group’s proposal to bring Mircești and Poiana into the town of Cornești — but by a different lawful route, through the laws governing the organisation of the territory. It finds that the matter “falls exclusively within the competence of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova”, and refers it to MPs.
Only then did it repeal the decision the Chancellery had demanded.
And immediately after, it relaunched the merger — with a new perimeter: the town of Cornești + the village of Cornești + the commune of Bumbăta.
All three passed with 11 votes in favour, 0 against, 0 abstentions. For comparison: the May perimeter had passed with 7 in favour and 4 abstentions.
The council did exactly what the notice showed it to do. Because the notice, fairly, did not forbid the project — it merely said the route was wrong, and pointed to the right one:
It is possible for the villages of Poiana and Mircești to become part of the town of Cornești, only not through the amalgamation procedure. Notice of the Ungheni Territorial Office
Why Bumbăta
It is not a sentimental choice. It is arithmetic.
The commune of Bumbăta has 1,244 inhabitants. Town + village of Cornești + Bumbăta = 4,064. Above the threshold, with a comfortable margin.
Bumbăta is the entry ticket. And it is no last-minute improvisation: the Bumbăta council had already knocked on Cornești’s door back on 27 May.
What would have happened had they refused
Legality review is not a suggestion. The law on local public administration makes it mandatory: every decision of a local council goes automatically, within five days, to the territorial office. Cornești’s decision was not “hunted down” — it passed through the routine filter.
From there the chain is strict: notice → 30 days to comply → if you do not, the office takes you to the administrative court.
Cornești had until around 25 July. It complied in five days.
What remains unresolved
Two things, both of them important.
The commune of Boghenii Noi is silent. It is the party that would lose the villages — and it has, in the state register, no decision accepting or rejecting the departure of Mircești and Poiana. The very law Cornești invokes for the parliamentary route requires the councils’ decisions and a general assembly of the inhabitants. Of that assembly we find no public trace.
The village of Cornești has not repealed its own decision. On 27 May the village council accepted precisely the perimeter declared unlawful — and in the register that decision still stands. In practice, as things stand, the two Cornești councils now hold different perimeters: the village, with Mircești and Poiana; the town, with Bumbăta.
The clock pressing on the whole district
Over all of this hangs a date: 31 July. It is the deadline after which the government would move from voluntary amalgamation to a compulsory one for small town halls.
The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova, the mayors’ association, challenges it head-on: “The 31 July deadline for ‘voluntary’ amalgamation is an illegality and abusive pressure on local democracy.”
We looked for that date in the text of the law and in the April amendment. We did not find it. We do not say it does not exist — we have asked the State Chancellery to show us its legal basis.
What is certain is that, in a race where every week counts, Cornești lost five — to a perimeter the law did not allow.