Official opening of EU accession negotiations expected next week; Moldovan president: ''We hope the decision will be taken”

The Moldovan authorities expect that the decision to officially open the negotiations on Moldova’s accession to the European Union (EU) will be taken in the very near future. “We hope that next week the official decision will be made,” President Maia Sandu told Realitatea Moldova, quoted by MOLDPRES.

The head of state said that the country’s authorities had been waiting for this decision for a long time and that, unofficially, the process of preparing for negotiations had already been underway for more than a year.

“This decision is something we have been waiting for a long time. Initially, Hungary was against the decision for Ukraine, now Hungary has a new government and discussions are still taking place. We hope that next week the official decision will be made, because unofficially we have already been working on this for quite some time,” Maia Sandu said.

The Moldovan president underlined that state institutions had made considerable efforts to prepare the accession process and that an official decision was necessary in order to move on to the next stages.

Referring to discussions held at the recent meeting of the Commission for European Integration, Maia Sandu said that Moldova was progressing at an accelerated pace in the process of alignment with European standards.

“I don’t know of any other country that has moved faster or as fast. Within the Commission, we carried out an interim assessment to see where we stand; we examined the indicators, because we must succeed by next September, as the European Commission’s Report will follow and, of course, we want to be positively assessed,” the head of state noted.

According to Maia Sandu, the workload differs from one ministry to another, with the most complex activities concerning the Environment Ministry and the  Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry.

“We want clean water and clean air. This is good for people and for economic operators it means making certain investments in order to reach EU standards,” Maia Sandu stressed.

The head of state also said that the European Union was currently working on the new budget and was analyzing more options for allocating financial resources. The country’s authorities hope that Moldova will benefit from a new European funding programme meant to support the modernization of more sectors.

At the same time, Maia Sandu said that the government was examining the possibility of creating a special institution to manage major development projects.