Romania’s Ambassador in Chisinau Daniel Ioniță said Bucharest will offer expertise to the Republic of Moldova in the process of completing the Accession Questionnaire received from the European Commission. The Republic of Moldova should not bank on immediate acceptance into the European community and the accession process should be of a high quality, not fast. For her part, Moldova’s Ambassador in Brussels Daniela Morari said that filling out the questionnaire during several weeks is the key priority of the Moldovan authorities, IPN reports.
Ambassador Daniel Ioniță said that Romania will stand by the Republic of Moldova at all the stages of European integration. The Romanian specialists will work with those from Chisinau to help them respond the questions in the format accepted by the EU. The decision concerning the granting of the status of candidate country is taken by a unanimous vote and communication with each member state apart is essential therefore.
“It is a questionnaire that tries to assess the performance based on the Copenhagen criteria. The questions refer to the rule of law, democracy, human rights. Romania, as always, stands by the Republic of Moldova. The Romanian side expressed its readiness to assist the Republic of Moldova to give responses to these questions. It is the first questionnaire. Another, more technical questionnaire will follow and this will refer to the problems of the responsible ministries. The assessment, the decisions of the European Council and the start of negotiations on the 35 chapters will follow. At the end, the Republic of Moldova, by a consensual decision of the 27 Member States, is to be invited to join the EU. The accession process should be of a high quality, not fast,” Daniel Ioniță stated in the program “Thursday with Liliana Barbăroșie” on the public TV channel.
Moldova’s Ambassador in Brussels Daniela Morari said the country will soon receive the second questionnaire from the European Commission. This contains questions about the functionality of the justice system, the economic development level and the adjustment of the national legislation to the EU’s legislation.
“The priority of the Moldovan authorities is to mobilize effort and resources to respond the questions from this questionnaire. They include political and economic criteria. The second questionnaire will come then and this will assess the concordance with the legislation of the European Union and will be much larger. This will be a huge effort for the institutions of the Republic of Moldova, but I hope we will manage to complete it during several weeks. We surely need and it will be useful to have the expertise of specialists who already worked on such questionnaires. We want to make sure that our responses are in the format accepted by the colleagues from Brussels. We will now present a general picture of all the areas to the European Union so as to see exactly where we are,” stated Daniela Morari.
Moldova’s application for EU membership was signed by President Maia Sandu, Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu and Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița on March 3 this year, after Ukraine and Georgia submitted similar applications to Brussels. The Moldovan authorities expect a response as to Moldova’s EU accession prospects will be provided in the June summit of the European Council.
