PARLIAMENT CHAIRMAN RECOGNIZES APPLICATION FOR MOLDOVA’S MEMBERSHIP IN EU WILL NOT BE SUBMITTED IN FORESEEABLE FUTURE

Speaking in a live program “Friday with Anatol Golea” Moldovan television, Chairman of the Parliament Andrian Candu found it difficult to answer to the question about the time when Moldova may supposedly submit the application for accessing the European Union.

A year before, he said in the same program that the application may be submitted in 2019 or even by the end of 2018. In July 2017, speakers of the Moldovan, Georgian and Ukrainian Parliaments, wrote a joint address to the EU Council and the European Parliament with the demand to adopt a document on providing a “European perspective” to the three countries at the Eastern Partnership summit. However, no such decision was taken at the November 2017 Summit in Brussels.

“Things depend very much on the general European context. You can see what is happening: the Brexit, the migrant crisis, the war in Ukraine, the situation in Georgia, in the Northern Africa, in the Eastern Balkans. All this is taken into account by the EU, we understand the difficulty of the situation”, the Speaker said.

He agreed that the current difficult relations between Moldova and the EU, including the recent European Parliament resolution on the situation in Moldova, also have an impact on this.

“We take this into account as well. The resolution is an important document we will also take into consideration. However, our relations with the EU are built not on the momentary solutions, not on emotions, but on documents and long-term action programs, first of all on the EU-Moldova Association Agreement we will keep fulfilling. For us the most important is to meet EU requirements and standards in order to be prepared when the EU context will allow accepting the application for accession from such countries as Moldova, Georgia or Ukraine”, Candu said.

Answering to the question about including in Constitution of an amendment concerning the European integration as the main goal of Moldova’s external policy and development vector, he reminded that the Parliament already can start considering this initiative.

“This initiative can be considered since June through the end of the current parliament mandate. We want very much to adopt these amendments. The parliamentary majority is unanimous, but we still need votes of Liberals and Liberal-Democrats to have a constitutional majority”, Candu said.

He recognized that these factions also want to introduce in the Constitution an amendment that the name of the state language to be “Romanian Language”.

“So far we are holding negotiations”, Candu said.