Parliament on February 7 named four directors of the Administration Board of the National Agency for Energy Regulation (NAER) for a six-year term. These are: Ștefan Creangă, Veaceslav Untila, Octavian Calmîc and Eugen Carpov. The new directors start work on March 1, IPN reports.
In the debate on the appointment, Lib-Dem Tudor Deliu said the candidates seem to have been chosen based on a preliminary agreement and the results of the contest staged by the parliamentary commission were rigged. Veaceslav Untila, even if he won the contest, couldn’t have known that he will become NAER director before the vote held in Parliament. But this argued he vacated the post of president of the Court of Auditors because he was named to another post.
Lib-Dem Iurie Țap criticized the appointment of the four directions, saying the parliamentary majority, through the expert commission it controls, promoted these to posts. He demanded that Veaceslav Untila should explain the reasons that made him leave the Court of Auditors. Untila replied he managed to transform the Court of Auditors into a modern and independent institution and considers he completed his duties and now wants to improve things in another area.
Asked by Lib-Dem Grigore Cobzac what he thinks about the presence of an intermediary in the importation of electrical energy, Eugen Carpov, one of the new NAER directors, said the existence of intermediaries influences prices and he will make effort for the number of intermediaries to be decreased to a minimum or for these to be removed.
The Communist leader Vladimir Voronin questioned the skills of Octavian Calmîc, saying this did nothing for Moldova in the posts held so far, with the signing of the Association Agreement being the most serious damage caused to the country. Calmîc replied that he worked at the Ministry of Economy since 1996 and in the posts held by him so far he contributed to obtaining the largest economic growth in Moldova, while the Association Agreement he signed brings only benefits to the national economy, with most of the exports being oriented to the EU market.
The legislature also appointed Anatolie Zagorodnyi as director general of the National Agency for Dispute Settlement. The candidate was selected at a contest by the commission on economy, budget and finance.
Moldova’s Parliament on February 7 held the first plenary sitting of the spring session. This is the last session of the Parliament of the 20th legislature whose mandate expired on November 30, 2018. Under the Constitution, the mandate is extended until the new legislative body is formed legally. The legislative elections were set for February 24, 2019.
