The twinning of localities in Moldova and Romania started primarily from a symbolical aspect. By twinning, we create a big family and later think about cooperation within infrastructure, social or cultural projects, mayor of the municipality of Edineț Constantin Cojocaru, vice president of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM), stated in a public debate hosted by IPN.
Constantin Cojocaru noted that the twinning of settlements was primarily aimed at familiarizing the people, children in Moldova with the Romanian space from which they were separated. By such closer relations with localities and communities of Romania, the people in the Republic of Moldova could gain access to Romanianism outside the Bessarabian space, where rudimentary Romanianism was conserved.
The CALM vice president said the twinning idea also derived from the fact that there are a lot of coexisting ethnic groups that do not have a very goof perception of Romania and something should have been done to change this perception. “Edineț has five coexisting ethnic groups. We wanted these groups to look at Romania with different eyes as we must admit that they taught us at school that Romania was an enemy,” stated Constantin Cojocaru.
He noted that gradually, together with the twinning of localities, different institutions started to come closer. The goal of signing such an agreement was to bring the communities closer. The mayors are those who go and sign agreements, but connections between schools, medical institutions and even churches need to be established later. Two different metropolitan churches continue existing in Moldova, but they both think in a Romanian way.
Constantin Cojocaru noted that in time they organized poetry festivals, culture and civilization magazines, painting and sculpture festivals together with Romanian localities. All these things brought the people closer spiritually, being later supplemented with other intentions, administrative projects, exchanges of good practices.
According to Constantin Cojocaru, at legislative level, Romania and Moldova should work together to see what can be done in such areas as Romanianism, twinning. At least districts should be twinned with counties of Romania. Moldova should have by a center of culture and civilization in the north, center and south of the country and the Romanian state can cover such costs. An intestate Romania-Moldova program to support the communities that aim to twin is also needed.
The public debate entitled “Twinning of localities in Moldova and Romania, a step towards European integration” was staged in the framework of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information”, which is implemented by IPN News Agency with support from the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova of the Government of Romania.
