The presence of democratic shortcomings in Moldova makes the European Union feel partly disappointed with the progress in fulfilling the Moldova-EU Action Plan, analyst Nicu Popescu told a round of public debates on Moldova’s European prospects on Monday, October 8. Nicu Popescu, a research fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, says the biggest shortcomings relate to aspects of democracy, media, human rights, as well as reforms in the law enforcement bodies. And the UE is increasingly paying attention to these deficiencies. Popescu also noted that the first report of the European Commission published in December 2006 showed that Moldova did worse than Ukraine in honouring commitments under their individual Plans. Given that Moldova has been politically stable, it is surprising how it failed to become a champion of reforms, the analyst added. The other side of the coin is that the Government managed to summon its efforts and fulfil the economic commitments under the Plan, but this mobilisation was dictated by the need to acquire an asymmetric trade regime with the EU and the authorities “had nowhere to hide”. However politically, Moldova is a source of concern for the EU, Popescu said. Referring to Moldova’s EU prospects, Popescu said citing a Western diplomat that Moldova is more likely to see itself accompanied by Ukraine in a potential enlargement wave rather than by the Balkans. Speaking on the same subject, the director of the Foreign Policy Association, Andrei Popov, said that a new report on Moldova’s progress in implementing the Plan is due in April 2008. It is already known that the functioning of democratic institutions will be given more space for comments than in the previous reports. So, the ahead-of-five-year-plan-type statements about fulfilling the commitments under AP by November 17 have raised a few eyebrows in Brussels and have showed that what really matters for Chisinau is putting some marks on the score sheets rather than the essence of the reforms. The Republic of Moldova and the European Union signed the current three-year Action Plan in 2005.