On February 21, President Igor Dodon, Speaker of Parliament Adrian Candu and Prime Minister Pavel Filip had the first meeting in trilateral format at the State Residence. Though the sides said that they have mainly contradictory and even diametrically opposed views and positions, the senior state officials agreed to work out a common platform for identifying a mechanism for making headway with the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict. In the same meeting, Igor Dodon announced that he would sign an Agreement of Cooperation between Moldova and the Eurasian Union in Chisinau at the start of April.
On February 22, Kirill Luchinski announced he decided to vacate the seat of MP and to write an application to withdraw from the Liberal Democratic Party because he remains a minority shareholder of the project to reform TV7 channel and does not want to affect the channel’s image from the position of a politician.
On February 22, there was launched a new project of assistance for the agricultural sector, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The High Value Agriculture Activity Project is designed to help Moldovan agricultural producers and entrepreneurs to become more competitive and flexible to the necessities of consumers so as to make use of the opportunities of the local, regional and international markets. The US$21m project will be implemented by Chemonics International during a five-year period.
Also on February 22, the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the appeals filed by the lawyers for ex-Premier Vlad Filat as evidently groundless. The lawyers classed the decision is illegal and inequitable and said they would go to the European Court of Human Rights.
On February 24, the parliamentary group of the Party of Socialists submitted a no-confidence motion against Minister of Health Ruxanda Glavan over the policies pursued in healthcare. This will be examined on March 2. The Socialists do not agree with the recent increases in the tariffs of medical services amid the rise in morbidity, reduction in the number of places in hospitals and closing of health facilities.
Also on February 24, the MPs adopted the legislative program for implementing the Association Agreement between Moldova and the EU for 2017. The document represents an extract from the three-year national plan agreed with the EU and contains 111 measures.
Selection by Elena Nistor, IPN
