Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicu Popescu introduced Plan 33 to the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs
The Republic of Moldova has entered a transition phase from a country associated with the European Union to a country aspiring to join it. On the one hand, the Moldovan government is working on the transposition of European legislation according to the Association Agreement, signed in 2014, which has so far enabled us to travel visa-free and partially liberalise trade with EU countries. The other priority is the opening of negotiations and the fulfilment of the nine conditions of the European Commission. Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu appeared today before the parliamentary committee on foreign policy. He announced an internal restructuring of the ministry, the problem facing the government is reduced administrative capacity. Meanwhile, Minister Popescu also talked about the plan to speed up the accession process - Plan 33.
According to the report, out of 705 EU legal acts that were to be implemented into national legislation under the Association Agreement, just 377 have been fully implemented and 144 - incompletely. Most arrears are in the ministries of agriculture and infrastructure.
"Everything that could be postponed has been delayed. Only absolutely pressing acts that were burning, that is, or there was public pressure either from within or rather from outside, those acts were transposed. Or if we look at the Agreement on Common Aviation Area, an extremely important agreement that allowed the reduction of the price of air traffic, of the tickets that citizens pay, and there barely half of the acts that were to be implemented were implemented", stated Parliament's Vice-President Mihai Popșoi.
"Harmonisation of legislation is not a technical process, i.e. it only involves transcribing some legal acts into Moldovan law. When drafting a normative act, the ministry has to take into account two aspects. One is harmonisation and the second is the technical possibility of the Republic of Moldova. There are certain acts that can be drafted, but their transposition into reality, given the economic and social conditions, is practically impossible", says the Secretary General of the Government, Igor Talmazan.
Plan 33 announced by Minister Popescu refers to 33 chapters to be negotiated with the European Union, which should cover the backlog from the last eight years.
"Obviously, all this requires a lot of internal coordination, requires the adoption of laws, but especially their implementation, often requires resources, and when we say that we need administrative [...] capacities to accelerate our accession to the EU, often these capacities mean people, means employees, means salaries, means negotiations, means budget," says Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu.
Parliament will receive a list of the government's legislative priorities for the spring session, which opens this week.
