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Vitalie Mester: Politicians must consider Romania's European integration experience


https://www.ipn.md/index.php/en/vitalie-mester-politicians-must-consider-romanias-european-integration-experienc-7978_1017321.html

Vitalie Mester, director of the Center of Legal Assistance for Disable People and representative of the National Council of NGOs, advised the politicians that will be part of the governing coalition to take into consideration Romania's European integration experience. The expert argued during the debate “Society and the political class show a poor understanding of the public nature of negotiations on coalition formation: reasons, dangers, solutions” that the vote of confidence offered by the people on November 30 to current politicians might be their last chance. The debate, which gathered several representatives of Moldovan civil society, was organized by IPN in partnership with Radio Moldova.

Mester recalled that when Romania applied for EU membership and had to implement a series of reforms, it received to warnings as a result of the EU monitoring, which demanded Romania to wipe out corruption and to reform the system of residential institutions.

“My recommendation to this coalition, which I hope will be formed, is to take into consideration Romania's experience and to avoid the same situation when a year before accession, they were told that without the two reforms, they wouldn't join the EU. We are good at adopting laws, but less so at implementing them and I advise the politicians to consider this”, said Mester.

The director of the Center of Legal Assistance for Disable People also noted that whenever the country faces an economic or political crisis, it's always the weak and the disadvantaged who suffer most.

“The governing parties have received a vote of confidence for the next four years, possibly for the last time, but this confidence will start to erode during the local elections if things don't change in a significant way before then. We lack political culture, we lack a report on what has been done during these years by the governing parties. Things haven't changed, only slogans. The government coalition lacks any kind of collective responsibility”, opined Mester.

The debate “Society and the political class show a poor understanding of the public nature of negotiations on coalition formation: reasons, dangers, solutions” is the 36th in the series “Developing political culture in public debates”, organized with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.