The Government approved on Wednesday, 22 July, a draft law that changes the way documents are filed with the courts and expands hearings by videoconference. It is not a law in force: the draft goes to Parliament and, according to its own text, applies three months after publication in Monitorul Oficial, once adopted.
For someone who has a case at the Ungheni Court, the first question is simple: does this oblige me to switch to electronic filing?
Who is obliged and who is not
The draft introduces into the Code of Civil Procedure a new article, 166¹, which requires an application filed through the courts’ system to be typed and signed with a qualified electronic signature. The second paragraph states for whom this becomes mandatory:
A statement of claim lodged by public authorities, by legal persons, by individual entrepreneurs, by persons exercising legal professions, as well as by a natural person assisted by a lawyer shall be filed in accordance with para. (1). Draft law 406/MJ/2026, the new article 166¹ paragraph (2) of the Code of Civil Procedure
The enumeration is exhaustive and does not include the natural person who is not assisted by a lawyer. That person therefore stays on paper. The text confirms it indirectly as well: if one of the defendants or interveners does not belong to the obliged categories „or does not have a known electronic address”, the claimant must bring the paper copies to the court within five days. And the sanction of returning the application strikes only the obliged categories.
Here, though, lies the detail worth remembering: if an Ungheni resident hires a lawyer, they automatically move into the electronic regime — both for filing and for receiving documents. The procedural status changes with the presence of the lawyer, not with the will of the party.
The same wording appears in the Administrative Code, through the new article 212¹, and in the Insolvency Law. The Code of Criminal Procedure is not touched by this draft, so criminal cases remain outside the obligation.
Videoconference becomes the rule
Today, videoconference hearings are limited to specific situations: the participant is abroad, in a penitentiary, is hospitalised or has locomotor disabilities. The draft introduces article 193¹, which allows the court to order a videoconference „at the reasoned request of a party or of its own motion, if the circumstances of the case justify it”, and removes the condition that the case be urgent. The panel of judges takes part from the courtroom, which remains open to the public.
For a court that serves 113 localities in two districts from a single building, this is the part with an immediate practical effect: fewer trips for every hearing.
The draft also provides protection against poor connections: technical failures that are not imputable to the party are no ground for procedural sanctions, and in contravention matters they do not count as failure to appear without good reason. Identity is verified with a valid identity document, with the video camera on throughout the hearing.
The risk hidden in electronic summoning
The less comfortable part of the draft concerns the communication of documents. A document is deemed communicated on the date and at the hour at which it became available to the addressee in the system — regardless of whether that person read it. Moreover, if you change your electronic address and do not notify the court, the summons goes to the last known address and is deemed communicated even if you no longer use that address.
From that moment the time limits for challenging start to run. And electronic summoning does not stop at the obliged categories: the draft provides that it is also sent electronically to witnesses, experts, specialists and interpreters, at an address the court can identify through government platforms and state registers.
What digitalisation looks like in Ungheni, in figures
The Ungheni Court received, in 2024, 10,306 new cases and settled 7,611, with 11.33 judges in activity — around 672 cases settled by each judge in a year. Of the total of new cases, 3,911 are applications left without effect, refused or returned, which means the gross figure has to be read with that caveat. The court serves the Ungheni and Nisporeni districts, after the Nisporeni Court was merged into the one in Ungheni, and since December 2024 appeals are heard at the Northern Court of Appeal, in Bălți.
In the first half of 2026, according to its own performance report, new cases fell by 13.1%, completed cases rose by 7.3%, and the settlement rate improved by 23.6%. At the same time, the appeal rate climbed from 9% to 13%, and the rate of quashed judgments from 1.66% to 3.62%.
On the digitalisation side, the picture is more austere. Ungheni has been a pilot court for the e-Dosar judiciar system since 2022, when testing was extended to the lawyers of the Bălți and Ungheni circuits. And the evaluation report of the agency that administers the system shows that, in 2024, the Ungheni Court recorded a single request for access to case files through the platform. The figure measures external access requests from lawyers, not the court’s performance, and is not set against the number of lawyers or of cases. At Bălți there were 107, at Chișinău 92, at Edineț 70.
The court itself lists among the risks assumed for 2026 the fact that „the court’s IT systems are outdated, affecting the functioning of applications”, alongside the lack of specialised technical staff and the lack of funding for digitalisation. In the same document it sets itself targets: 30% of eligible hearings held online and at least 50% of documents sent electronically.
What lawyers say about the system that is to become mandatory
The agency’s report also contains a national survey, answered by 96 of the 170 lawyers polled and naming no particular court: 15% had never used the platform, and 41% had run into technical problems. Among the reasons given by respondents is a practice that the report records as an account by lawyers, not as its own verification: that files submitted physically would be processed with priority over those submitted electronically. Some of the respondents said they had been asked at the court „Why is it hard for you to file physically?”.
The report recommends, among other things, banning requests for documents in physical format when they have already been filed through the electronic system.
There is also a gap between the obligation and the infrastructure. The draft obliges legal persons and individual entrepreneurs to file through the courts’ system, but external access is through e-Dosar judiciar, and the platform is currently open to lawyers, with the pilot extended to the end of this year. Extension to other participants is announced in official documents, without a public date.
The objections rejected in the consultation
The summary annexed to the draft shows that several institutions raised issues that were not taken up.
The Equality Council asked that all persons with disabilities, not only those with locomotor disabilities, be able to be heard by videoconference, invoking „the inaccessibility of the relevant infrastructure”, life in rural areas and low income levels, and proposed that witnesses with disabilities be able to be heard from the premises of the guardianship authority or of the social assistance body. The proposal was rejected, on the ground that it exceeds the object of regulation.
The Union of Authorised Administrators asked for alternative filing methods for situations in which the system does not work, „without the risk of procedural sanction or forfeiture of rights” — rejected. The National Union of Court Bailiffs pointed out that institutional electronic addresses have limited storage capacity, with the risk that some procedural documents would not be received — rejected. The Edineț Court asked for minimum technical standards to be regulated and for the reinstatement of the time limit where a participant proves an objective impossibility of accessing the electronically communicated document; the answer was that these are matters of implementation. The Ministry of Finance asked that the total cost of implementation be indicated, and the authors replied that at this stage this is not possible.
How documents are filed now
Until the law is adopted, the rules remain those of today. At the Ungheni Court, str. Națională 10/1, documents are filed at the counter of the Case Records and Procedural Documentation Section, Monday to Friday between 08.00 and 17.00, with a break between 13.00 and 14.00, by post, or at the electronic address jun@justice.md. State and stamp duties are paid exclusively through MPay.
The court also publishes a warning that produces returns: an application signed with an electronic signature but printed and brought in on paper risks being sent back, because the validity of the signature can be verified only if the document arrives in electronic form.
This article is based on the full text of draft law 406/MJ/2026 and on the summary of objections annexed to it, on the Government’s press release of 22 July 2026, on the evaluation report of the e-Dosar judiciar system published by the Agency for Digitalisation in Justice and Judicial Administration, on the activity data for 2024 reported by the Ungheni Court in the CEPEJ form, on the court’s performance report for the first half of 2026 and on its action plan for 2026. The ratio of cases settled to the number of judges belongs to the newsroom. The number of videoconference hearings held at the Ungheni Court does not appear in the public documents consulted.