The Republic of Moldova is now in a rather difficult situation caused partially by the COVID-19 crisis and also by the fact that the Government is not ready to fulfill all the commitments assumed before the people and the EU, namely as regards the ensuring of the independence of the judiciary and the investigation of all the resonant cases, Mihai Mogîldea, team leader of the Europeanization Program of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, stated in the public debate “About the quality of the EU-RM relationship through the angle of the six, old and new conditions” that was staged by IPN News Agency.

Mihai Mogîldea noted it is rather hard to make forecasts about the prospects of the relations with the EU, given the existing realities and some of the events in Chisinau. The future will depend a lot on how ready the authorities are to fulfill the undertaken commitments and to ensure the implementation of the Association Agreement with the EU. The authorities should be ready to implement the reforms undertaken through the Association Agreement and the Government’s action plans that are in effect.

As to the parliamentary majority’s and the opposition’s capacity to unite around the need to meet the conditions imposed by the EU, the expert said he is skeptical about such a possibility, especially in the pre-electoral context, when not much time remained until the campaign prior to the presidential elections.

As an example, Mihai Mogîldea gave the missed occasion to build a common platform of the government and the opposition for managing the health crisis. This was to be done in spring, but none of the sides was eager to ensure a climate for creating an efficient platform for managing the COVID-19 crisis.

According to him, this could have been done especially when there were signals that a political crisis will develop in Chisinau and the Government wasn’t supported by a parliamentary majority. In such conditions, the opposition and the ruling parties could have named a national unity, anti-crisis government with a limited mandate that would have ensured the implementation of all the measures needed to overcome the COVID-19 crisis, both in the healthcare sector and in the economic sector.

“Now this platform cannot be created as the election campaign starts in several weeks and two opposite poles will enter a direct competition for the office of President,” said Mihai Mogîldea, noting that Parliament has full powers during the election campaign. “The President’s campaign activities and the work of Parliament do not need to be overlapped. The previous practice shows the MPs enter the campaign together with their party leaders and it is thus not clear how efficient Parliament will be.”

The debate “About the quality of the EU-RM relationship through the angle of the six, old and new conditions” was the 147th installment of the debates project “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.