Financiarul

Romanian President Traian Base scu on Wednesday stated that Romania was ready to sign a partnership agreement intended at supporting Republic of Moldova on its way to European accession, agreement under which the Bucharest authorities to use not only their political influence within the EU, but also their acquired expertise.

‘Our goal is to see Moldova become part of the European Union. This is quite a difficult objective to achieve in fact, given the eight years of not making any progress. I do not mean anything bad, but I cannot prevaricate either.

Although we are making a great diplomatic effort right now to have Moldova included in the group of Western Balkan countries that share the same EU aspirations, we have not been very successful so far. We are not successful because the legislation in Moldova lagging very much behind the EU one, in terms of functionality of the institutions,’ said President Basescu.

He also added that Romania proposed a partnership to the Republic of Moldova, to help it with the European integration, given that it has already gone through this process. ‘We have people who already know what to do, especially in such areas as security and functionality of the institutions and we are ready to put this expertise at Moldova’s disposal, whenever is necessary.

We hope the partnership we proposed to our colleagues in Moldova to be negotiated very soon, and that it will be signed quickly,’ he said. Moreover, the President referred to the 12 bilateral agreements whose negotiation was frozen in 2008 ‘ for reasons that cannot be blamed on Romania.’
In this respect, the Romanian head of state referred especially to the agreement on the mutual recognition of diplomas, recalling that there are 3,400 Moldovan students benefiting of scholarships in Romania right now, with the agreement on the recognition of diplomas becoming thus an emergency, from the viewpoint of the interests of the young.

‘We will also accelerate the negotiation of the agreement on the treatment of the workforce from the two countries. There are many Moldovan citizens working in Romania, but because of the lack of an agreement this time they work in Romania will not be counted for their pension. We have to transfer their contributions to the pension fund in Moldova, so that these people to have their money when they retire, in case they would want then to return to Moldova,’ he said.

Traian Basescu also specified that the Ministry of Development has 130 million euros available in European funding for joint projects with Moldova and Ukraine.
He also reminded that Romania has decided to grant a non-reimbursable financial support worth 100 million euros to be invested in infrastructure projects in the Republic of Moldova.