How Moldova became the poorest country in Europe, ex-EU Ambassador

In the 20 years of independence, Moldova achieved significant and unexpected results, but it is however the poorest country in Europe and not only, former European Union Special Representative for Moldova Kalman Mizsei said in an interview for Info-Prim Neo, which was {published on August 22, 2011}. “The most important accomplishment is the fact that during these 20 years, Moldova maintained the democratic organization of the state and this thing is very important. Except for the short period of the civil war of 1991-1992, the political culture in Moldova was non-aggressive and this is also very and very important. Surely there were protests and political battles, but they were peaceful. I think that for such a young state and young democracy, for such a poor country these are significant and unexpected accomplishments,” said Kalman Mizsei. On the other hand, the former EU Special Representative for Moldova said that the failures and mistakes made in the independence period affected first of all the living standards in Moldova. “The people should ask themselves directly why the country with so talented people is the poorest in Europe, while the annual Gross Domestic Product per capita is much lower than in many African countries. You must ask yourself directly, though it is an inconvenient question,” he stated. According to Kalman Mizsei, there are two aspects of the answer to this question: what depended on Moldova and what did not depend on it. “On the one hand, as I said, Moldova is not attractive from geographic viewpoint and thus it wasn’t helped by foreign capital as Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia were. When socialist industry was being destroyed in our country, foreign investments appeared and helped us to put to good use the human resources. Unfortunately, in your country this did not happen. I consider this is because you are far from markets and there was no infrastructure. As a consequence, some of the professional skills have been lost in Moldova, unfortunately, for good – which is not the case with the Central European or Baltic states. But, on the other hand, it should be mentioned that you did not have a sufficiently consistent and good economic policy in order to offset this foreign shortcoming through liberal economic reforms, as for example Georgia has done in the last few years, and by building infrastructure. As to such a simple thing as the roads, there are very few reconstructed roads though the international financial organizations and the EU and the U.S. are ready to provide assistance. That’s why, speaking about shortcomings, we must speak about shortcomings connected with reforms and the functioning of the state. I think that a lot should be remedied in these areas,” he said. Kalman Mizsei believes the mentioned errors are also due to the insufficient political will of the previous and current governments, but not only to them. “It is also about the mentality of the administration, which still includes many aspects of the former Soviet mentality. Powerful administration is needed, which would not aim to maintain power at any cost, but would be forcefully oriented towards reforms. I remember how Leszek Balcerowicz started reforms in Poland in 1980s-1990s. He did not pursue the goal of maintaining power, but of modernizing Poland. The great and importance difference resides in this. I believe that you political class is not very well determined in this sense and it did not fully implement the reforms,” he said. The Transnistrian conflict is another problem that hinders Moldova’s development. “Conciliation is needed in the Transnistrian conflict. The country must be unified. But how should it be unified is an enormous challenge,” the ex-Special Representative of the European Union for Moldova Kalman Mizsei stated for Info-Prim Neo.