“Over the last few weeks, we passed one more extremely important and historic stage for the Republic of Moldova’s accession to the European Union, influenced by the Venice Commission’s decision and recommendation to open EU accession negotiations with the Republic of Moldova. This recommendation is to be confirmed by the member states. Even if there are several more stages in this process, we can now ascertain that the efforts and progress made by the Republic of Moldova are clearly attested and recognized,” Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Nicu Popescu stated in a news conference where he presented the actions taken by Moldova on the path of European integration since the EU membership application was submitted.
Nicu Popescu noted that last week the EU ascertained that Moldova fully fulfilled six out of nine recommendations and the other three recommendations are close to being implemented. Three key measures are yet to be implemented, including continuous progress and ensuring of a transparent and meritocratic process in the appointment of candidates who passed the vetting at judicial and prosecution self-management bodies, including in the appointment of the prosecutor general. The second measure is to allocate the necessary resources to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. It also goes to additional deoligarchization measures, including relevant regulations concerning cash payments and financial flows.
“These are the next main steps that need to be taken to complete the implementation of the nine measures. These steps are realizable and in today’s meeting of the Cabinet we took particular steps to limit cash payments. Evidently, we all know that together with our society, we yet need to work on the deoligarchization objective and the justice sector reform so as to limit the influence of oligarchs, thieves and organized groups on our political and economic systems,” stated the minister.
As to the ensuring of a transparent and meritocratic process in the appointment of persons to posts in the justice system, Nicu Popescu said that society, the Government and the European partners want the justice sector reform to be strengthened and accelerated so that the fight against corruption in Moldova is enhanced by the clear participation of a consolidated and reformed justice system.
“The conclusions in Brussels are rather clear – the Republic of Moldova is today considered a country with the best reform dynamics among the EU candidate states. In this regard, our country is ready to open the accession negotiations with the European Union and we continue to get ready for this process,” said the official, noting that next week he goes again to Brussels, together with mates from a number of miniseries, to structure Moldova’s next accession steps with the EC.
According to the European Commission’s report presented last week, the Republic of Moldova made progress in all the 33 public policy chapters, while in nine of these, namely free circulation of capital, public procurement, the right of commercial organizations, financial services, energy sector services, penalty policy, social policy and employment, customs policy, foreign and security policy, it made substantial progress.
