Implementing EU-Moldova Action Plan: two steps forward, one step backward

Two steps forward, one step backward. This is the short description of the EU-Moldova Action Plan made by the authors of a report “Moldova and the EU in the context of the European Neighborhood Policy. Realizing the Plan (February 2005 – January 2008)”, which was launched on Tuesday, March 25, at a roundtable in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. The study was performed by the Association for Participative Democracy “Adept” and “Expert-Grup”, with the support of the Soros Foundation-Moldova. The study analyzes ten crucial areas and is occasioned by the termination of the three-year term initially established for the Plan. The executive director of the Association for Participative Democracy “Adept”, Igor Boţan, has explained that significant progress has been recorded during this period, as well as problems. The authors remark that the development of the implementation of this document of paramount importance for Moldova has had an non-uniform character, Moldova making more progress in the economic compartment of the Plan. The Parliament’s speaker Marian Lupu has underlined the largest attainment is the fact that the bilateral Plan has not remained a parallel agenda with the one of the authorities, being transformed into priorities of the domestic policy in ratio of 90 per cent. Another success remarked by the speaker has been the formation of an institutional system to direct, coordinate and monitor the implementation of the Plan. “Not exactly an easy exercise,” says the Parliament’s president. “After three years, this very heavy bureaucratic machine startled,” Marian Lupu said. The speaker has also appreciated as substantial progress the development of the legal frame, although he has acknowledged there are problems in implementing it. The problems of applying into practice the legal achievements have been remarked by other experts. This is to explain to a great extent, they opine, why in such areas as the human rights, the freedom of media, the independence of justice and combating corruption, the progress was low or even absent. The report’s authors find that the largest development in implementing the Plan was recorded till March 2007. Since then a series of regresses have been recorded as stopping the live transmission of the Parliament’s sittings, unjustified before the general local elections of June 2007, raising the electoral threshold, forbidding parties to associate in electoral blocs. The economic development was marked by “the wine crisis”, which reduced the economic growth of the GDP from 7.5% in 2005 to 3.3% in 2007, the experts point out. The economic growth has been limited to large urban areas, while the rural economy has stagnated. The role of remittances in backing the economic growth remains major. The business climate has been bettered through a series of laws and strategies. Yet those do not function as expected by businesses, discouraging the foreign investment. On the background of worrying developments as the rise of the commercial deficit, the trade relationships with the EU have generally developed rather plenteously. The EU market has become the main destination of the Moldovan exports, and from March 2008, Moldova will benefit of the autonomous trade preferences, find the researchers. The EU-Moldova Plan was signed on February 22 in 2005. On March 24, 2005, the Moldovan Parliament unanimously adopted the Declaration on political partnership for the realization of the objectives of the European integration.