The Association Agreement means that the European Union will become more involved in Moldova so that the public administration becomes more efficient, justice functions and the money from the public budget is invested in the areas that count for the people, such as healthcare, education and infrastructure, MEP Siegfried Muresan stated in an interview for Radio Free Europe, commenting on the advantages of the Association Agreement that fully takes effect on July 1, 2016, IPN reports.
“The European Union will become involved with all the expertise it has so that they see in Moldova what they saw in other Eastern European countries, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, during the last 20 years, namely that things started to go better for the people in these countries,” he said.
Siegfried Muresan noted that the Association Agreement is the most complete instrument for the rapprochement with the EU. “It is also a very powerful signal by the European Union that we want as close political, administrative and economic relations with these countries as possible so as to help them find the path to prosperity because we they are in our neighborhood,” he stated.
The MEP also said that there were several EU enlargement waves during the last 15 years and the EU was confronted by a number of governments that didn’t want to really fight corruption and do reforms and wanted the country to be held hostage by several small groups. “The European Union learned from this experience. The monitoring mechanisms now are much more complex. The European Union’s interest is to work well with the governments, the states that have Association Agreements. These governments always get a correct chance from the EU, including the diplomatic exercise,” he stated.
Siegfried Muresan voiced hope that the government in Moldova wants to implement reforms. If this government only pretends to be doing reforms, Brussels will understand this sooner or later. The institutional relationship will continue to work because there is wish to work well with the authorities of the countries that signed Association Agreements, but it will be much harder for Moldova without confidence. If the government loses the confidence of the international partners, it is also the people who will suffer the consequences.
