Premier accuses independent experts of misinforming the international community

Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev believes that the independent experts are misinforming the public opinion about the Government’s progress in fulfilling the Moldova-EU Action Plan. Vasile Tarlev stated Friday, October 12, at the meeting of the National Committee on European Integration that “some so-called experts who were not asked to be experts, give erroneous information to the society and arouse concerns among the experts representing the European Union”. The Premier didn’t give any names but requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to arrange a round table for the “faultfinding experts” so that they do not discredit their names by making misleading statements any longer, and also to get them involved in implementing the actions under the Plan. According to the Prime Minister, “it is easy to voice criticism and make irresponsible accusations, but to have the Action Plan fulfilled everyone must work shoulder to shoulder”. The Prime Minister further stated that the commitments under the Action Plan are about to be fully accomplished. The Government plans to finish implementing the Plan by November 17, on the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the National Committee on European Integration. The deadline for the Plan is 1 March 2008. This week, Nicu Popescu, a research fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, told a round of public debates on Moldova’s European prospects that the democratic shortcomings in Moldova make the European Union feel partly disappointed with the progress in fulfilling the Moldova-EU Action Plan. According to him, 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. At the same event, 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.