Prime Minister Pavel Filip has a message for EU and NATO leaders: Despite recently electing a pro-Russia president, Moldova is still firmly on a westward trajectory. Pro-Russia president won’t destroy the EU friendship. This is the quintessence of an article published by the international magazine Politico in the evening of November 29, quoted by IPN.
Speaking to journalists after meeting with EU officials in Brussels on Tuesday, Filip said media reports that Chisinau would pivot away from the bloc after the election were off the mark. “I saw headlines saying that, after Bulgaria, Moldova was also lost to the EU,” Filip said. “It’s not true.”
Filip played down the potential impact of Moldova’s President-elect Igor Dodon on the association agreement between the EU and Moldova. “The president has the power to call for a referendum, but it has a consultative character,” Filip said. He stressed the position of president was largely ceremonial, and that any decision to withdraw from the pact would require parliamentary approval, which was unlikely.
The prime minister promised his country would move closer to the EU for the remainder of his government’s mandate, which ends in 2018. “It’s unfortunate that previous governments have committed fraud and these frauds were committed under the EU flag,” Filip said.
Filip said he has spent his 11 months in office attempting to reset Moldova’s relationship with the EU, and was in Brussels to finalize the release of €45 million in direct budgetary aid from Brussels. Also on the agenda during the trip: a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to sign an agreement to open a liaison office in Moldova.
The NATO liaison office, designed to increase the country’s defense and cybersecurity capabilities, would function like a diplomatic mission in Chisinau and would not see military equipment on Moldovan soil, according to Filip, reducing the risk of a backlash from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
“Someone asked me if this office is against Russia. This is not against anything,” Filip said, adding that the NATO presence should not anger Moscow because such offices exist in Russia and other former Soviet countries.
Filip rejected the idea that his pro-Brussels stance could lead Moldova into civil war or a military conflict with Russia. “The conflict started when Ukraine did not sign the agreement with the EU, we, fortunately, signed an association agreement that is enforceable and cannot be terminated or modified in any way by the new president,” he said.
Filip suggested chaos could descend on the country if Socialist parties win a majority in the 2018 parliamentary elections, but said that was unlikely. “It’s a scenario that cannot be possible because, if we continue things the same way as this year, there will be much more Europe in Moldova at the end of [our] mandate,” he said, quoted by Politico.
