The Republic of Moldova is closer than ever to the accession to the European Union, said the executive director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE) Iulian Groza. According to him, the preliminary assessments show that there are very good chances for the Republic of Moldova to start the accession negotiations. Acceding to the representative of civil society, progress has been made in fulfilling all the nine conditions formulated by the European Commission, while the justice sector reform and the fight against corruption will remain in the focus of the European Commission after the accession negotiations are opened, IPN reports.
The IPRE executive director noted that in November the European Commission will make public the assessment report on the Republic of Moldova’s readiness for accession negotiations.
“The Republic of Moldova is closer than ever to becoming a member state of the European Union. We are a candidate state that forms part of the enlargement policy of the European Union. To open the accession negotiations with the EU, we need to fulfill nine conditions. When the accession negotiations are opened, our path to joining the EU will become even clearer from technical and political viewpoints. The opening of negotiations will be a political decision of the European Union, the member states. Any enlargement process is based on merit. We expect that the report on the Republic of Moldova will be published in several weeks. This report will include an assessment of the degree of integration into the European Union,” Iulian Groza stated in the program “Reflection Points” on Vocea Basarabiei channel.
The nine recommendations put forward by the European Commission refer to the justice sector reform, the shortcomings in the electoral legislation, anticorruption, deoligarchization, strengthening of the fight against organized crime and asset recovery, improvement of public services, public administration reform, involvement of civil society in the decision-making processes, strengthening of the public administration capacity, protection of human rights and fighting of gender-based violence.
“As a result of our assessments, we determined that the Republic of Moldova met a large part of the conditions and progress has been made in fulfilling all the nine recommendations. Based on the intermediary assessments carried out so far and on our contacts with the European Parliament, we know that the conclusion of the European Commission with the representatives of the member states is that the Republic of Moldova has fulfilled the conditions in all the areas, but must show continuous progress in the justice sector and the anticorruption sector. But these aspects in the negotiation process will be always open. There are good chances that the Republic of Moldova will meet all the conditions and the European Commission will recommend opening the negotiations,” said Iulian Groza.
According to the European integration schedule, after the European Commission publishes the assessment report, the European Council in December will decide whether the Republic of Moldova can start the accession negotiations with the EU or not.
