The parliamentary elections and the challenging formation of the government stole from the precious time needed by Moldova to implement the Association Agreement with the EU. Though the accord’s provisions brought advantages from the very first days of its coming into force, the Government must step up the implementation of reforms and of the EU standards so as to fully benefit from this accord. Such recommendations are contained in the quarterly publication “Euromonitor” that is produced by the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT and the think tank “Expert-Grup”, IPN reports.
ADEP executive director Igor Botan said the remarkable results achieved in the European integration area in 2014 include only the signing and ratification of the Association Agreement with the EU. Besides accomplishments, there are also shortcomings deriving from the lack of political will to do reforms. This led to the presentation by the development partners of an informative note about the steps that should be taken in the short-, medium- and long-term.
Adrian Lupusor, executive director of “Expert-Grup”, said the Association Agreement with the EU was signed in difficult conditions owing to the problematic economic situation in the EU and the bans imposed by Russia on the import of Moldovan products. However, the provisional implementation of the accord led to the alleviation of the effects caused by Russia’s bans, while Moldova’s exports to the EU rose by 13%. The government should recover the lost time and should take measures to remove the non-tariff barriers to export and to reform the state institutions.
The “Euromonitor” says that the Government took important steps in the area of e-governance, digitizing a number of services, but effort should be made to increase the people’s confidence in these. The pace at which the justice sector reform is done is positive, but there are a number of overdue tasks, such as the strengthening of anticorruption mechanisms, the polygraph testing and the implementation of internal warning mechanisms.
According to the publication, Moldova has yet to carry out a number of tasks to ensure the protection of human rights and to reform the ombudsperson’s service. Though the women represented 30% of parties’ candidates before the elections, these remained underrepresented in the legislative body. As to the Transnistrian settlement, only two meetings in the 5+2 format took place, including because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This diminished further the talks’ output.
