At the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit of November 29, 2013, Moldova will enter a new stage of relations with the European Union. What will it bring and how will it influence the life of the Moldovans from the country and from abroad? What will each of us gain and what should we do for this benefit to become possible? How will the new conditions affect Moldova’s relations with other countries? The IPN Agency aims to look for answers to these and other questions worrying society, together with you, within the series of articles “Association with the EU to everyone’s understanding

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In the European integration process, Moldova will have to implement many of the existing European standards in order to improve the quality of life. We discussed the issue of European standards with Ecaterina Mardarovici, executive director of the Women’s Political Club 50/50.

“The European standards to not mean that somebody will come and say that we should do this thing or another one. The European standards are a good mechanism for managing the funds for every area. We must ourselves monitor the money allocated in every area. Every person should monitor it, not somebody else.

“To care is also an unwritten European standard. We must have a participative community behavior when we see somebody destroying a bench that the local administration put for elderly people or mothers with children. We often go by when that bench is vandalized as we do not care.

“Nobody will come to collect our garbage from parks. This is another unwritten European standard. It says that it is clean where they keep clean. Every person must know that they will have to pay a large fine for throwing litter in the parks.

“A change of mentality is what we need, but mentality changes with difficulty if the Government and the authorities do not take measures.

“The children up to the age of three, who are in difficulty, according to the EU standards must be obligatorily placed in families for a period as they obtain love and affection and all the life habits up to this age and only in the family. If these children are placed in institutions, the costs will be higher.

“As to the pensions, every person must know what contribution they pay into the pension fund. There are alternatives in all the European countries. After retirement the people receive money not only from the state, but also from non-state funds that are monitored. The people do not wait only for the state pension and this is a standard.

“In this respect, we did nothing. The Pension Law was adopted in 1998. Something was changed, but there are no clear functioning mechanisms. Nothing has done as regards the optional pension fund. That’s why I say that mentality changes gradually, but following clear and active measures taken by the state.

“We will have to develop different social services to improve the quality of life of the persons with disabilities and of the elderly people.

“Another European standard is to pass from social assistance in money to services. When the state gives money to a person who depends on another person, there is the risk that somebody else will manage this money. By this standard, emphasis is laid on care services at home, such as assistance to persons confined to bed or in purchasing diapers. This is what these people need. When you give them money, knowing that they depend on something else, you do not solve the problem.

“This system is functional all over the EU. In Italy, France or Germany, the persons who are confined to bed receive social assistance in the form of diapers, food, and services. We continue to provide money, which unfortunately not always reaches the destination and does not improve the live of these persons.

“In the education system, there is a minimum quality standard that all the schools should ensure. If a school does not meet this minimum standard, it means that it meets none of the existing standards.

“In tourism and the hotel sector of Moldova, we have the highest prices in Europe. Do you know why? Because the VAT on hotel services in Moldova is 20%, as against 9% in the EU. Being poor, the state tries to obtain money from everything and this is an obstacle to the development of this sector.

“Psychologically, we will comply with these standards with difficulty as we got used to doing things in a different way.

“We, the Moldovans, dress the children very warm so that they do not catch a cold, but the children get a cold two times a week for this reason. There are certain instructions, but the Moldovans find it difficult to follow them. For example, the newborns should not wear a bonnet immediately after they are born as it is better for them so.

“The Moldovans must be convinced that they mustn’t buy furniture and carpets for the home, but rather a computer for the children and connect it to the Internet, for the benefit of the child and the family.

“It will be hard at first, because this is the nature of humans”.

Alina Marin, IPN