Moldova intends this year to adopt as many as 1,503 standards prescribed by European directives for low tension equipment, instruments for determining electromagnetic compatibility, medical instruments, construction equipment and protective gear. In total, Moldova plans to adopt roughly 16,000 European standards, 5,000 of which have been translated by neighboring Romania, informed Deputy Economy Minister Octavian Calmic. The documents translated by Romania will be provided to Moldova for a modest fee, though the translation of these documents is very expensive, up to 30 euros per page, due to the very complex and conventional language used in such papers, said the deputy minister. The Moldovan Ministry of Economy is considering the opportunity to form mixed team of specialists from Moldova and Romania to translate European standards for the use of both countries. Also, the Ministry is looking to review the product certification procedure. Calmic said that, although standardization is not a requirement since 1 January 2010, it is necessary that businesses adopt a set of standards for their products and implement them according to the parameters included in the specifications so as to ensure a high quality of those products both on the internal and external markets. “Regretfully, not all the businesses realize the need to implement these standards. They maintain that their products are fine even without implementing standards and verifying them at the lab. But those products cannot be competitive enough”, said Octavian Calmic. The stock of standards used by the National Standardization and Metrology Institute consists of 25,617 standards, including 1,099 ISOs and 1,627 European standards.