Young people in Moldova and Romania aim to combine forces to make the agreements of cooperation and twinning between communities and localities from both sides of the Prut River more efficient. They want increased transparency in the spending of public funds and that these funds be used to improve the situation in communities, not on works to polish the image of politics, representatives of the Iasi Students’ League and the Bessarabian Students’ League, stated in a news conference hosted by IPN.

Iasi Students’ League vice president Mihai Purici said that there are now no records of the twining and cooperation agreements signed by localities of Moldova and Romania. Therefore, the students decided to determine the number and type of these agreements. “We, as a student organization, are directly interested in the development of local communities, especially in the context of pressing problems existing in Moldova, such as migration, depopulation and urbanization. We saw efficient projects to execute public works financed by mayor’s offices of Romania in localities in Bessarabia and we think that this should become a good practice for twinned localities. We want the Republic of Moldova to come closer to Romania and to the European civilized world given the events that are to take place in the Republic of Moldova. This way we try to put right a historical injustice and to bring together the localities from the left and the right sides of the Prut, as earlier,” stated Mihai Purici.

Georgiana Diana Grozescu, secretary general of the Iasi Students’ League, provided figures obtained as part of the carried out study. Out of the total of 3,173 territorial-administrative units of Romania, 393 have twining agreements with the Republic of Moldova, which is 12.38%. In the Republic of Moldova, out of the total of 1,681 territorial-administrative units, 313 have twinning agreements, which is 18.61%. “We asked the mayors if they would like to have more such agreements and learned that 213 of these mayor’s offices are inclined to such type of cooperation. We determined that 34 of the mayor’s offices have unfinished agreements. This activity lasted for a year. We didn’t manage to collect data from 1% of the mayor’s offices,” stated Giorgiana Diana Grozescu.

The president of honor of the Iasi Students’ League Silvian Emanuel Man said the students made a considerable effort to collect data as there are no relevant records at official level. By this activity, they aim to support the Government in Chisinau and also the Government in Bucharest so as to facilitate such twining agreement that are so necessary for ensuring the observance of the principles of decentralization and subsidiarity as regards the proper regulation and conduct of work in the local public administration. “We also make sure there is real contact between communities, while the communities in the Republic of Moldova and the country in general keep the chosen trajectory of the pro-European, pro-Euro-Atlantic and pro-Romanian road,” stated Silvian Emanuel Man.

He noted that at the next stage, the students would like to extensively monitor the twinning and other signed agreements so as to determine their number, type, budgets available to localities and how the money is managed. “We want to undertake, at the current second stage of the project, to audit these twinning agreements.  The first stage consisted of a poll, while at the second stage, we would like to turn into a mechanism for auditing these agreements so as to really know the provisions of each of the cooperation or twining agreement, which are the sums transferred to the localities and how these were spent. Besides the multiple examples of good practices identified in these agreements, there are particular aspects that should be better regulated. Regrettably, the situation is not very clear as regards the way in which these funds are spent. The Parliaments of the two states should joint forces and provide clearer regulations and should facilitate these partnerships between mayor’s offices,” stated Silvian Emanuel Man.

The news conference entitled “Study: Twining agreements between localities of the Republic of Moldova and Romania. Students’ view” was held in the framework of the project “Double Integration by Cooperation and Information” that is implemented by IPN News Agency with support from the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova of the Government of Romania.