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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“The EU will be the only true beneficiary of the Agreement as it does not need costly reforms to access the Moldovan market”
Expert of the Institute for Development and Social Initiative “Viitorul” Ion Tabarta said it is the Republic of Moldova that needs the Association Agreement. This is a plan for the institutional modernization of the country and it does not oblige the Republic of Moldova to integrate into the EU, even if it does not exclude this. The Association Agreement can be a preparatory stage for the European integration.
“It is the Republic of Moldova that needs this Agreement for having functional institutional democracy and economic welfare. Regrettably, for particular reasons, we didn’t implement much of this Association Agreement. Moldova needs this accord the first, while the European Union the second,” stated Ion Tabarta.
According to the expert, the European Union can cope without Moldova and can be well further without having such framework documents. But the Republic of Moldova needs such framework documents. The problem is that despite the Europeans’ support, the Republic of Moldova hasn’t yet managed to do a lot.
“It would have been ideal if we had been a developed, prosperous and democratically functional state when the Association Agreement with the European Union was signed and we hadn’t needed anyone’s support. Now, by this agreement, we undertook particular commitments. We must understand that this Agreement is a roadmap for us, which we didn’t put into practice,” said the expert.
Ion Tabarta noted we cannot assert that things changed radically after the Association Agreement was signed. The problems appeared earlier, but erupted especially in the period after the signing of the Association Agreement, in particular the banking frauds.
“We, not the EU are to blame for the fact that the Association Agreement with the European Union does not work as it should or, more precisely, in accordance with the expectations. It is we who should do reforms, not the European Union or the European partners. They only offer us support in facilitating the implementation of reforms. But the reforms must be done by us, at internal level. We haven’t yet managed to do this,” stated Ion Tabarta.
Alina Marin, IPN
The article on the same issue published in July 2014 is available here.
