Cohesion of ethnocultural communities and their inclusion in society can be achieved through culture or cultural and social exchanges, said sociologist Tatiana Cojocari, a permanent expert at the IPN public debate on "Promoting European values in interethnic relations".

"There is a lack of more cultural exchanges even at the country level, because for me personally, growing up in the north of the Republic of Moldova, it rarely happened that I got to know Gagauz people, for example, to explore the Gagauz culture, which is a rich culture, or Ukrainian culture, for example", Tatiana Cojocari said.

The sociologist noted that "through these cultural exchanges, minorities have an additional motivation to get to know the culture and learn the language, but unfortunately, the perception is created among minorities that if they learn Romanian they will lose their language. Although we have laws to develop other languages, they don't seem to work in practice.

Another example would be for people from ethnic minority groups to be employed in state institutions and be directly involved in the country's decision-making process.

Another example would be for people from ethnic minority groups to be employed in state institutions and to be directly involved in the country's decision-making process.

"This is where we can use additional European Union instruments and do through our accession process, take advantage of the opportunities that the EU offers, to provide additional guarantees, so that we can reassure ethnic and linguistic minorities that the language they speak will remain and develop. We should not only ask from ethnic minorities, we should also give to them", Tatiana Cojocari said.

The most numerous ethnic communities are Ukrainians, followed by Gagauz and Russians, according to the 2014 census. Overall, ethnic minorities account for around 18 percent of Moldova's population. The permanent expert at the debate noted that Russians are no longer the second largest ethnic community as they were in 2004.

The public debate on "Promoting European values in interethnic relations" is organized within the project "IPN News Agency for Social Cohesion and Pro-European Moldova", funded by IMS.