Moldovan president's speech at Strong Mayoralties - Developed Settlements event

Dear Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan,

Welcome back to Chisinau.

Unfortunately, this morning brought alarming news from Galati, where innocent people were injured following a drone’s explosion. Russia’s aggression brings the danger of war into our homes and endangers the lives of our citizens. This war has been killing people in Ukraine for four years, and it must not continue for one more day. We want peace in Ukraine, we want peace all over the world, we want to talk about development, not about threats to our sovereignty and security.

Together with Romania and other European states, we will continue to strengthen our defense to protect our citizens and our country. We want to be able to talk about projects, about modernization, not about drones flying over our communities. That is why, we are meeting here today – to discuss progress and prosperity.

Mr. Prime Minister, we thank you for Romania’s support and for your personal support for the development of localities of Moldova, and for the assistance you are offering to our mayors.

Dear local elected officials,

Thank you all for your tireless daily work in the service of your communities and for having the courage to embark on a complex reform: rethinking the way we manage our localities and pooling resources, capacities and efforts.

More than 500 mayoralties have already decided to merge their administrations and to cooperate for the benefit of local residents! I am glad that many of you are here today.

We must acknowledge that local public administration reform places a heavy burden on you, the local elected officials. It is difficult to choose to rethink competencies, to rebuild the administrative structure, to reach agreements with your neighbors, with neighboring mayoralties and to explain to residents why the reform is necessary, especially in the context of growing disinformation.

At the same time, we all understand that denying the reality we live in is not a solution. It is regrettable, but after three decades, Moldova still has too many villages without tap water, with local roads that are impassable, with public buildings whose roofs are leaking. And the problem does not lie in the willingness of local officials to meet people’s expectations, but in the lack of resources, specialists and in administrative fragmentation.

When we came into government, we placed the development of our villages and towns at the forefront. Since 2022, when we launched the largest local development programme, the European Village Programme, we have repaired hundreds of kilometers of road, built over 1,400 km of water pipelines, and modernized schools, kindergartens and sports grounds. We have invested far more money than before and, even so, there is a need for more and for faster action.

The experience of neighboring countries and of European states shows that larger administrative structures are a path to modernization. A larger town hall has greater financial capacity and can implement major projects. A small mayoralty is forced to spend a lot of money on maintenance and is left without sufficient resources for development.

A strong mayoralty brings resources together into a larger budget and can build water supply systems, wastewater treatment plants and roads between localities.

We need larger administrative structures, with the necessary specialists, in order to make full use of the opportunities opened by the EU accession process – pre-accession funds are granted for large projects with regional impact and for consolidated teams.

And, probably the most anticipated thing by citizens – modern services become better organized in a large mayoralty. Waste management, social services and digitalization are cheaper and easier to manage when you have an efficient administrative structure.

Of course, in order to manage to achieve these goals, central government, together with local government, must ensure two things: digitalization, so that people face as little bureaucracy and as few trips as possible and a fair distribution of funds, so that no one is left behind in terms of development.

Citizens’ concern is understandable, especially since there are also voices spreading various scare stories, in order to block the reform.

No one claims that the reform is easy – this is precisely why it is essential that we work together for our communities, discuss different visions, weigh them carefully and identify the best tools.

Simply being “against” will do nothing to help our communities – what is needed is cooperation and dialogue. My call to everyone is to take part in this change that is necessary for Moldova – let us all work together, not against each other, because I am convinced that we all want developed villages and towns.

I was born and raised in Risipeni, Falesti. Neither then, nor today, 50 years later, do the people in the village have tap water. In my home village, according to the latest census, there are 1,246 people, and they all deserve water, sewerage, connecting roads and street lighting, just as all residents of villages in our country deserve these things. And they deserve them now, not in another 50 years.

This is the painful reality we are living. But we are not looking at it with resignation. For more years now, we have started addressing these problems that have accumulated over decades. And now we have launched a reform whose sole objective is to raise the standard of living in our villages and towns.

Moldova missed the opportunity to join the European Union together with other countries of the region; we have lost too much time, and we can no longer afford to waste precious time. We must move in parallel – to build European-style administrations at home, while advancing in the accession process and getting  external development funds.

The local public administration reform will not improve things overnight. Months and years of work will follow to build strong administrations, bring services closer to citizens, and implement major infrastructure projects. But if we do not carry out the reform, these things are impossible.

We start from a painful truth. Moldova has beautiful, picturesque villages, rich in traditions, but villages that have emptied over the last three decades before our eyes. People did not leave because they do not love their land, but because they grew tired of waiting for normality.

We have a duty to bring normality to our localities as quickly as possible. We are responsible before future generations for closing the development gap with European states, for improving living conditions at home, so that those who are born in Moldova will want to live here.

In Moldova, in the villages, people have always come together to lend each other a helping hand. Great things were done together, through community work. The reform is, in fact, a kind of community work between villages – more villages joining their mayoralties into a single one to make everyone’s life better. Water, sewerage, roads, services – we can achieve all of these together, if we pool our resources and invest wisely.

The reform is not about competition, but about the fact that when we join forces, we are stronger. We love our villages; let us build for them, with confidence, a modern future.