Prime Minister Pavel Filip on November 27-29 paid a visit to Brussels where he had meetings with senior EU officials, including President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and President of the European Council Donald Tusk. The authors of a new article on sic! say these meetings were surely included in the agenda of the European institutions, but not much information about the content of the discussions was published on their websites, except for announcements accompanied by pictures and several summary sentences placed by some of the European officials on their Twitter accounts. Instead, the Government’s press service was rather generous and issued press releases after each meeting of the Premier, IPN reports.
Pavel Filip and European Commissioner Johannes Hahn held a joint news conference in Brussels and several statements made by the Premier attracted the attention of the authors because these could not be found in the official press releases of the Government of Moldova. In the news conference, Johannes Hahn admitted that the way in which the European Union tried to support Moldova in the past wasn’t efficient and the EU’s reputation was affected. For his part, Pavel Filip, admitting that the Government of Moldova also made mistakes, expressed his content with the fact that the presidential elections in Moldova also showed that the European development course is supported by most of the citizens, note the authors of the article produced within the project Sic!.
The authors consider this assertion is somehow improper and far from the reality if it is regarded from the angle of the results of the recent presidential elections that were won by the pro-Russian, pro-Eurasian Economic Union and anti-EU candidate Igor Dodon by slightly over 52% of the vote, while the pro-European candidate Maia Sandu polled about 48% of the ballot, even if the latter didn’t use this desideratum as the key element of her election campaign.
The authors of the article mention also a statement made by the Premier in Chisinau, that the development partners regained confidence in the Republic of Moldova. They tried to find out what these assertions are based on by analyzing the Government’s press releases and the short reports that appeared on the social networking site accounts of the European officials with whom Pavel Filip met.
“As regards the ‘regaining of confidence’, it is hard to determine what the Premier based his statements on at a time when the Audiovisual Service of the European Commission published only concise information about the planned and held meetings with Pavel Filip, accompanied by pictures, except for the news conference given jointly with Johannes Hahn. In the extracts from that news conference, the European Commissioner speaks about delays in the mass media reforms and the fight against corruption,” reads the article.
The authors say the posts on the Twitter accounts of the European officials are also limited to “we discussed the initiatives concerning robust reforms”, “the European Parliament supports the reform process”, “in the implementation of reforms, we want to see concrete results for the benefit of the people”, and “we discussed the Agreement with the IMF and reform program”.
“Finally, the part concerning ‘confidence’ should be confirmed including by concrete reform actions, not only by declarations. At the same time, analyzing the elements of the relations between Chisinau and Brussels, we will not find a text or an assertion that would say that the EU ‘lost confidence’ in the Republic of Moldova. Consequently, if it wasn’t lost, how could it be regained? And the last aspect. The European officials usually state that they do not support governments and politicians, but the country and its people,” says the article.
The full article in Romanian can be read on the website sic.md. Sic.md is a project implemented by IPN News Agency with the assistance of Soros Foundation Moldova.
