Romania will soon allocate Moldova over 25 million euros of the total amount of grant assistance of 100 million euros for the implementation of various projects.
This was announced by Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu after a meeting in Chisinau with his Moldovan counterpart Nicu Popescu. He noted that the parties discussed during the meeting the implementation of the Moldovan-Romanian intergovernmental agreement on granting financial aid of 100 million euros for Moldova. "Romania has already approved projects worth more than 25 million euros for Moldova. These are projects with a concrete impact on citizens. The matter concerns the "European Village" program, aimed at providing easier access to water and sanitation services for almost 100,000 citizens of Moldova. These are projects that involve equipping schools with laboratories for the study of chemistry, physics and biology. The matter also concerns hundreds of minibuses and school buses," the Romanian diplomat said. He noted that it is important that Moldova has significantly developed its trade relations with Romania, which has become its main trade partner. "At the end of this year we will have a record trade turnover of $3.5 billion between our countries, which is indeed an outstanding achievement, especially considering the difficult economic context, both the post-pandemic one and the context caused by the war against Ukraine. That's a 46% increase over last year. In addition, we also discussed ways to further improve the effectiveness of our economic cooperation. We will have a Joint Economic Commission in February. We also discussed the importance of increasing Romanian investments in Moldova, as well as the importance of a meaningful dialogue with Romanian investors in Moldova. We talked about the measures we have already taken in terms of easing border crossings, discussed the construction of bridges between our countries, which we are working on. Basically, we reviewed the status of each individual project at today's meeting," said the Romanian Foreign Minister. He recalled that Romania had intervened immediately in mid-October to provide between 80% and 90% of the electric energy needed by Moldova. Romania continued to support the Moldovan budget by transferring 10 million euros of its development assistance, the support which was envisaged within the Moldova Support Platform. On November 24, a new direct budget support in the amount of 340,000 euros was also transferred from the funds of the Romanian Foreign Ministry's development assistance, also in the context of the energy crisis in Moldova. Bogdan Aurescu said Romania will support the organization by Moldova of the fourth ministerial meeting of the Moldova Support Platform, as well as the organization of the meeting of the European Political Community, which Moldova will host next year. "Regarding the European agenda, we discussed how to promote together Moldova's European path. The coming year will be decisive in promoting this European path to open accession negotiations with the European Union, and this is an achievement of Moldova, which I have no doubt we will be able to support. In order to do so, it will be very important to implement the recommendations of the European Commission in its June 17 Opinion, which suggested granting candidate status," Bogdan Aurescu said. According to him, he discussed with Nicu Popescu other measures that would lead to a better integration of Moldova into the internal market of the European Union. "We discussed the roaming relationship between Moldova and the European Union, a very important project for Moldovan citizens. We discussed the outcome of the Eastern Partnership meeting that we attended together in Brussels on December 12, which was, indeed, an important milestone. It is a project that Romania initiated together with the Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden, and namely the Eastern Partnership revival, in order to adapt it to the new geopolitical context after Russia started a war against Ukraine and first of all in order to be able to use it to support Ukraine and, respectively, Moldova's accession process to the European Union," the Romanian diplomat said. Bogdan Aurescu said a pilot training program was launched in October for Moldovan civil servants and diplomats who will be involved in the EU accession process. "We have already allocated in next year's budget a significant amount for a number of specialized training courses for specialists in certain areas related to the EU accession process. Also from the funds of development assistance, from our budget, from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we have started a training program for judges from Moldova, which is managed and developed by the National Institute of Magistracy in Romania", the Romanian Foreign Minister stressed. He expressed conviction that this difficult period we are in will contribute to finding solutions, because every problem also brings opportunities which are mostly related to the European course of Moldova. //20.12.2022 - InfoMarket.
