The agreement on the functioning of the Nistrean hydroelectric complex is negotiated in concert with other problems from the bilateral Moldovan-Ukrainian agenda. Civil society requests the authorities to give up such an approach and to stop the negotiations on the agreement until an international specialized company carries out a study to assess the environmental, social and economic impact both for the installations from the barrage of the accumulation reservoir that is to start to be used and for the six hydroelectric plants that are to be built along the upper course of the Nistru on the territory of Ukraine.
“This agreement is vital for the Republic of Moldova, for its people and for the people from Ukraine’s Odessa region. First of all, this agreement should be negotiated in a transparent way. Secondly, it should be removed from the package of decisions and negotiated separately,” executive director of the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) Arcadie Barbarosie stated in a news conference at IPN.
Victor Parlicov, former director general of the National Agency for Energy Regulation, said the negotiation of the agreement on the functioning of the Nistrean hydroelectric complex together with other problems from the bilateral agenda, such as the joint customs posts, recognition of Moldovan property on Ukraine’s territory, demarcation of the Moldovan-Ukrainian border and the Transnistrian issue, is not the best approach. Moreover, such an approach can lead to compromises that would affect the life of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova.
IPP expert Ion Efros said the draft agreement deliberately ignores the environment provisions of the EU- Moldova and EU - Ukraine Association Agreements, especially four Directives. There are also ignored another four Directives that Moldova and Ukraine pledged to obey within the Energy Community Treaty. It is hard to understand why Moldova and Ukraine elude the EU environment protection mechanisms after formally committing themselves to modernize, reform and integrate the states into the European legal and economic area and the EU’s system of values.
Civil society demands to publish the updated draft agreement on the functioning of the Nistrean hydroelectric complex, together with all the annexes, and to propose it for public debates, as the national legislation, the Association Agreements and the Energy Community Treaty provide, and to give up the idea of signing the accord at any cost and in a hurry, until the end of 2017.
