Bucharest announces change in policy towards citizenship granted to Moldovan citizens

Romanian authorities are determined to slow down the process of granting citizenship for thousands of Moldovan citizens, taking into account the impact that it would have on the EU countries. As part of a conference dedicated to economic migration, held at the end of last week, Romania’s Minister of Administration and of Internal Affairs Vasile Blaga warned about the danger of massive issuance of Romanian citizenship for Moldovan citizens. Diplomatic sources from Bucharest, cited by Romanian media, say that the new policy is grounded on an assessment of the intelligence service, according to which the most serious threat is Moldova’s colonization by Russian national, due to the migration of Moldovans to Romania, a situation that would not be tolerated by EU. As Blaga states, Romania will become a destination country for migrants and “will have to chose those whose culture has more resemblance to ours”. Granting citizenship “would depopulate Moldova of citizens of Romanian origin, therefore it is not very important for Romania to grant citizenship for such a large number of applicants, said the minister. “The solution is to issue visas in a special regime, that is free of charge“, Blaga said. He also estimated that of those 900.000 Moldovans who applied for the Romanian citizenship, only 10% will actually stay in Romania, and the rest of them will leave for west European countries like Spain, Italy, or France. Previously, President Traian Basescu stated that Romania experience a deficit of labour force of 200.000 workers, which could be covered by immigrants from Moldova. He also expected that 1.5 mln of Moldovan citizens in all would apply for Romanian citizenship until the end of the year, of Moldova’s population of 3.8 mln. The Ministry of Justice announced that it started to work on a project designed to simplify this procedure. At present, the European legislation gives to each member state the right to set up a national policy as regards the acceptance of legal migrants, depending on the labour market’s demand. Soon, the European Commission is to suggest the introduction of a common EU “green card” for migrants from countries outside the EU. Each member state will choose the quotas of immigration that it decided upon. At the same time, there will be set up EU information centres in these third-party countries to avoid illegal migration.