Moldovan Government pleads for signing a European Union Association Agreement. Vasile Tarlev stated that the Government is preoccupied with the legal framework of co-operation between Moldova and the EU for the next year, since the present framework – the EU-Moldova Action Plan expires on March 1, 2008. PM Vasile Tarlev stated this week that “Moldova deserves and needs an Association Agreement with the EU”. The PM said it’s not important how the next judiciary accord will be named, Association Agreement or a new action plan; it is the content of the document that matters. Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Andrei Stratan has previously stated that signing an association agreement with EU will guarantee the irreversible course of Moldova’s European integration. Association Agreements also called European Agreements have been conceived to create a framework for co-operation between EU and Central and Eastern European countries until they join the EU. The legal basis for these agreements is art. 238 of the Treaty of Rome, which allows the EU to “conclude with a third country, a union of States or an international organisation agreements creating an association embodying reciprocal rights and obligations, joint actions and special procedures”. Association Agreements are included in the category of mixed agreements, since they are not only economic, but also political, and of other aspects which don’t require implicit handling by EU. In case of mixed agreements, EU member states are partners individually or collectively. The agreements have to be ratified by the European Parliament, the parliaments of each member state of the Council of Europe and the parliaments of associated countries. Communist deputies refused in July to include in the order of the day a draft law containing Moldova’s appeal to start negotiating the European Agreement, submitted by opposition parties. This was the fourth time that the deputies refused to examine that project.