In July 2014, IPN News Agency carried out an awareness raising campaign entitled “Myths and truths about the Association Agreement”, which tackled the main fears related to the process of signing and ratifying this accord. In almost three years, we decided to return to the same sources and the same subjects in order to see how things changed in evolution and if the expectations that existed before the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU were met.
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“EU assistance is not enough to cover the reform needs”
“After almost three years of the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union, on the one hand, the situation worsened, because the reformation of institutions in sectors requires political will, the will of those who implement reforms, but this will hasn’t been yet seen. Apparently, the EU understands things slightly differently and the assistance for reforms continues to increase. From this perspective, we are in a dual situation. On the one hand, no political will is shown. On the other hand, the assistance grows,” said the executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Arcadie Barbarosie.
He noted that he cannot give the example of a ministry or sector where reforms are done in accordance with the requirements. Consequently, we can speak about a profound crisis in the reform process, which can be solved only by profoundly reforming sectors. “It seems that the EU competes with Russia: if assistance from Russia does not come, this is provided by the EU to show that there is European will and there is will to promote reforms,” stated Arcadie Barbarosie.
According to him, the EU assistance for reforms is understood mistakenly. “We often ask for money for purchasing furniture, fridges, computers, but the assistance does not consist in this. If you want to do reforms and don’t know how, you seek assistance. But when you ask for support for buying furniture and modernizing the office, this is not reform, but pseudo-reform. Unfortunately, a lot of assistance comes for ‘polishing’ offices,” concluded the executive director of the Institute for Public Policy.
Alina Marin, IPN
The article on the same issue published in July 2014 is available here.
