Press Release
on the organization of a live-streamed interview with the the video interview with the commentator Igor Boțan, titled “European Political Community Summit to everyone’s understanding”

Several very clear messages for the international community were transmitted in the European Political Community Summit hosted by Moldova, namely that there should be ensured interconnection between wellbeing, unity, aggression fighting and observance of international law norms. These are very clear things that should be realized by everyone, the standing expert of IPN’s project Igor Boțan stated in an interview entitled “European Political Community Summit to everyone’s understanding”.

“It is very important for the people of Europe to realize several things: wellbeing cannot exist without security and security cannot exist without unity. On the one hand, the aggressor has resources, has ambitions, has goals that are hallucinating and, without unity, it is impossible to resist the aggressor. On the other hand, aggression cannot be combated without transmitting a very clear signal and without adopting a position to it. Aggression can be combated only when there are clear international law rules that are applied,” stated Igor Boțan.

The expert explained why a joint statement of the participants in the summit wasn’t signed. According to him, from the start it was announced that a joint statement will not be signed, as no statement was signed after the Prague summit. A joint statement should not be expected as long as the high-ranking officials from those states met to discuss problems. So, the discussion of problems and identification of solutions were the goals of this summit, while the symbolical significance was to prove the unity of the states from Europe against abuses and aggression,” stated Igor Boțan.

Nevertheless, he considers the EPC Summit held in Bulboaca achieved its main goal, namely to transmit a signal of unity from the level of the whole European community. “The most important fact is that Europe is united against aggression. The potential of only the European Union, which is almost half of the countries that took part in the summit, the economic potential I mean, is almost ten times higher than the potential of the aggressor – the Russian Federation. If the other states agree and realize that they should be united against the aggression, we see that the first signal is that any aggression will meet with the unity of the people of Europe, not only of the European Union, and this thing is transmitted in the clearest way possible,” said Boțan.

The expert went on to say that “a powerful message was transmitted also for the Russian Federation and for the people of the Russian Federation, namely that aggression cannot be accepted in the 21st century after Europe was the source of two world wars that claimed tens of millions of lives and it is very important for the European community to be united in the actions to discourage the Russian Federation, first of all through the agency of economic, commercial sanctions. Evidently, the message is very powerful also for the states involved in illicit trade, with parallel imports, which help the Russian Federation to continue this war. So, the messages were multiple and we realize that on another platform than that of the European Political Community, it is hard to imagine that all these messages can be warped up and transmitted for everyone to understand what goals are pursued and to whom the messages are addressed,” stated the expert.

The interview titled “European Political Community Summit to everyone’s understanding” forms part of IPN’s series “Developing political culture through public debates”. The project is implemented with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany..

The following deliverables were produced:
- Record of live-streamed video (1h11:28 min.) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaPkFg23I5w ;
- - News item #1 from the interview „ Igor Boțan about messages of EPC Summit: Wellbeing cannot exist without security and security cannot exist without unity” - https://www.ipn.md/en/igor-botan-about-messages-of-epc-summit-wellbeing-cannot-exist-without-security--8004_1097366.html;
- News item #2 from the interview: “EPC message for Moldova: You are not alone and have chance to leave this gray zone, Igor Boțan” - https://www.ipn.md/en/epc-message-for-moldova-you-are-not-alone-and-have-8004_1097370.html;  
- Interview transcript „ Igor Boțan: Benefits enjoyed by Moldova after EPC Summit are invaluable”-  https://www.ipn.md/en/igor-botan-benefits-enjoyed-by-moldova-after-epc-summit-are-8004_1097374.html

Valeriu Vasilica, director of IPN