The National Council of the Consumer Protection Organisations in Moldova presented on Tuesday, February 6, during the first public debates, the project of the National Strategy for consumer protection. The project is worked out with the support of the TACIS project “Assistance in Implementing APC, OMC and EU-Moldova Action Plan in the context of European Neighbourhood Policy”. Head of the League for the Consumer Rights Protection Roman Mihaes stated that the strategy aims at a five-year period (2007-2011), and its provisions are in compliance with the European policies for the consumer protection, but also take into account national specifics. Only three chapters of the document are worked out at the moment. The strategy is to be supplemented with the civil society’s suggestions and then submitted to the Government for approval. As Mihaes states, at present it is needed to adjust the legal and institutional frameworks of Moldova to the requirements outlined in the EU-Moldova AP and pursuing the perspective of the EU membership. That is why in the first place it is necessary to create a National Agency for Consumer Protection that would be a specialised state body, have experts, laboratories, empowered to withdraw products from the market. Also, it is needed to institute certain alternative forms for the judicial litigations – mediation and arbitration, as the litigations regarding consumer rights usually relate to small amounts of monetary damage and it is not rational to carry them throughout the judicial hierarchy. According to the strategy’s authors, at present there are still weaknesses in the field of the consumer protection: lack of an efficient institutional framework and a system of cooperation between control bodies, the reduced level of the consumers’ access to information, gaps of the legal framework, in particular the energy sector; insufficient capacity of the existent laboratories etc. The National Council of the Consumer Protection Organisations was set up in 2006. Its founders are the League for the Consumer Rights Protection, Public Movement for Consumer Protection “Pro-consumator”, and the Centre for Consumer Protection.