PDM exchanges views about Moldovans integrating into Europe

The Democratic Party (PDM) held a round table on Friday inviting Moldovan and foreign experts to discuss about Moldova's European integration, Info-Prim Neo reports. Opening the reunion, PDM president Dumitru Diacov lauded the efforts made by the government of Ion Sturza in 1999 toward the European integration. “In 9 months only, the Sturza Government did much more than the present governance. The foundations of this process were established then,” Dumitru Diacov has said. He has criticized the present government saying that, although declaring approaching Europe a national priority, it does nothing concrete in this respect. “Our government ardently serves the Marxist-Leninist ideals, thus creating much confusion in Europe,” the politician said. During the Sturza Government, the PDM leader was the president of the parliament. Oleg Serebrian, a deputy president of the Democratic Party, has talked about political theories analyzing the development that must occur in Europe in the future. Although he declared himself as an advocate of the idea about Moldova's joining NATO, Serebrian has said this will be hard to accomplish, exemplifying by the refusal that Georgia and Ukraine got a year ago at the NATO summit in Bucharest. “It's clear NATO is not willing to strain its relationships with Russia by expanding to the Black Sea area,” the parliamentarian said. He also insisted on the impossibility to realize the idea of Moldova being simultaneously a member of both the European Union and of the Community of Independent States, “because it's a matter of two different free trade spaces.” A Minister for Justice in the Sturza cabinet, Ion Paduraru, has considered the state of things in the Moldovan judiciary. “As a matter of fact, this system warks not badly, only from time to time it gets instructions from the executive branch,” said lawyer Ion Paduraru. “That is a reason why citizens tell pollsters the judiciary is corrupt and not trustworthy.” Paduraru says the central administration has changed some 100 judges out of a total of 400 for the last eight years. “The bad point is that the Government is recidivating in violating the European Convention of Human Rights, including by illegal arrests, illegal expropriations and by violating the right to a fair trial,” Paduraru said. Moldova has the largest number of cases lost in the Strasbourg Court per capita. The Democratic Party has held the round table to draft recommendation concerning the European integration for the government-to-be. An opinion poll published on March 24 shows 0.7% of voters are ready to vote for the PD, out of the needed 6 percent to enter the parliament. In 2005, the PDM members got into the parliament as part of a bloc drawn by Serafim Urecheanu, whom he abandoned immediately. On April 4, 2009, the PD deputies and the parliamentarians from the Social-Liberal Party headed by Oleg Serebrian, voted for Communist leader Vladimir Voronin to become a president.