When the Metropolis of Bessarabia was revived in 1992 the Moldovan government refused to register it. The stated reasons shifted over the years: that it was not a new church but a schismatic offshoot of an already registered one, that recognition would raise territorial questions, that the state should not intervene in an internal Orthodox dispute. The practical effect of non registration was severe, because an unregistered body in Moldova had no legal personality, could not own or rent property, could not employ clergy, could not receive donations and could not seek the protection of the courts if its members were harassed.
The church took the refusal to Strasbourg, and in 2001 the European Court of Human Rights decided against Moldova. The reasoning is what made the case a standard citation. The state had argued it was protecting public order and the territorial integrity of the country. The Court held that the duty of the state under Article 9 is one of neutrality and impartiality, that this duty is incompatible with any power to assess the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the means by which they are expressed, and that where a community is denied legal personality it is denied the ability to exercise the right at all. It also observed that a state may not decide, in place of a religious community, which body is the true one.
The judgment reaches well beyond Moldova. It is the case cited whenever a government in the region declines to register a competing church, and it has been applied to disputes in Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia and elsewhere. The registration was granted after the ruling.