The measures taken so far are not sufficient to speak about the reform of the local public authorities (LPAs) as about a system change and about the ensuring of the conditions needed for sustainable local development. There is no understanding of the fact that local development is blocked not by the territorial fragmentation and the size of population, but by an excessive administrative system that is decentralized and fully outdated. The Republic of Moldova needs a local public administration reform centering on the person who is offered vital public services. A reform in which the people are not figures, while the villages are not sums is needed, said experts invited to public debate staged by the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE), IPN reports.
Searches show the LPAs are considerably fragmented. Currently, there are 898 mayor’s offices, 32 districts and a territorial administrative unit. The limited human and financial resources were an underlined aspect. The LPAs are always constrained and have to do a lot of things with insufficient funds. This affects the quality of services, said IPRE programs coordinator Adrian Ermurachi.
The president of the Congress of Local Authorities of the Republic of Moldova Tatiana Badan noted that the LPA sector the past ten years has witnessed particular progress, but this is not enough to speak about a systemic change. If all the reform attempts of the last five-ten years are analyzed, the same mistakes that led to the failure of the reform and the current blockages will be identified. For example, unilateral solutions were imposed from up to down. There was no complex view of the reform. There was no real political will. The real interests of the people were neglected.
Tatiana Badan, who is the mayor of Selemet village, considers not the territorial fragmentation is the main cause of the problems faced by LPAs, but the distorted image of the local relations. The governmental classes didn’t have the wish and capacity to fulfill the commitments undertaken through different policy documents at the national and local levels. If at least half of the decentralization strategy or the roadmaps signed by the Government and the Council of Europe in 2016 and 2021 had been implemented, the situation in the local public administration would have been different and the solutions would have been more realistic.
According to her, there is no real financial decentralization. The national investment funds are centralized and politicized. Administrative control, excessive political pressure and disproportionate actions and approaches on the part of the inspection and judiciary bodies persist and discourage any effort and initiative. A broader social and political consensus on the LPA reform and efficient institutional and legal frameworks are needed.
Larisa Voloh, chairwoman of the Parliament’s committee on public administration, said the LPA reform is multidimensional and can be done only by consensus. “Most of the times, the people perceive this reform of the local public administrations as a purely territorial-administrative reform. But it should be explained that the territorial-administrative reform is only a part of this and can be the result of authentic and efficient decentralization, which is a broad process through which the communities in Moldova should go,” stated the MP.
The event was staged as part of the project “EU Debates Café: advancing the knowledge and expertise about EU’s institutions and policies in Moldova” that is implemented by IPRE in cooperation with the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Moldova with financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
