Igor Girlea, principal consultant in the Legal Committee for appointments and immunities, Parliament of the Republic of Moldova
The European Commission has adopted a proposal for a COVID-19 macro-financial assistance package for its Eastern neighborhood partners to help the countries limit the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of its global response to the coronavirus outbreak, the European Commission is mobilizing an emergency support package for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine of up to €80 million for immediate needs and up to €883 million for the short and medium term to support the social and economic recovery of the region. StrategEast has interviewed leading experts from Eastern Partnership countries to comment on the implication of EU support measures in each country. Here are the answers from the expert on Moldova.
Even though the fact that this financial support will mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, we should understand that it will not cover all the losses incurred.
Thus, for this support to be as efficient as possible, it is highly important to carefully and in a prompt manner inject this financial support in solving the main problems provoked by the spread of coronavirus. In other words, I consider that this support, if to be spent in a proper and timely manner, is enough to help the governments to set the cornerstones for economic and social recovery.
Unfortunately, the governments in the Eastern European States proved to be inefficient in identifying and tackling the problems provoked by COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, eastern European countries are famous for their rampant corruption scandals. In this context, the EU should invent some new programs of support which would allow providing direct financial support in the most flawed parts of the health, educational, technical, business, etc. sectors, after a thorough assessment. The support itself should be offered to the beneficiaries (legal entities, natural persons) without intermediaries to avoid any type of embezzlement.
The pandemic didn’t influence much the relations between Moldova and the EU, in other words, it didn’t change the paradigm. It’s worth mentioning that since the fall of 2019, because of the lack of will of Moldova’s government to promote some structural, democratic reforms, the EU reviewed its approach to bilateral relations with Moldova, becoming more reserved in assisting Moldova’s government. Unfortunately, the actions taken by the Moldovan Government during the pandemic, just highlighted for the EU that it is leaning to less democratic methods of governing, thus contributing to a continual worsening of the EU-Moldova bilateral relations.
