Chisinau, February 22 (Infotag). In 2005, the Republic of Moldova achieved only mediocre success in realization of the EU-Moldova Action Plan. Such is the conclusion made by experts from the Association for Active Democracy (ADEPT) and the Expert-Grup analytical center. On Wednesday, they convened a news conference in Infotag, and presented “Euromonitor” – a report on their monitoring of the Action Plan implementation.

Expert-Grup Executive Director Valery Prohnitchi highlighted that the said achievements were mainly a fruit of “political will, social consensus, and external factors”.

“The EU-Moldova Action Plan is per se a very complicated document, containing over 300 tasks, so we selected for our monitoring the most essential of them – democratic institutions, Transnistria question, reform of public administration, justice, external trade, reform of the regulatory system, border control, combat against organized crime, migration management”, said Prohnitchi.

In his words, the Euromonitor experts’ chief conclusions were as follows: the moderate achievements, or even absence of any success in some fields, were overwhelmingly because the Action Plan has been under way for very short yet, because the country’s administrative possibilities are limited, and because new conditions emerged during the implementation process.

The Executive Director further held, “A considerable progress was attained last year in economic development: the economic growth was 8%, investment increased, and we hope the increase will continue next 4-5 years. A certain progress has been reached in relations with international financial organizations, in particular, with the International Monetary Fund. Regretfully, Moldova achieved less progress in waging the regulatory reform and in struggle against corruption”.

ADEPT Chairman Igor Botan said success in the sphere of democratic institutions is a product of the political partnership between Moldovan parliamentary parties: “To ensure stability and consolidation of democratic institutions, the Moldovan Parliament has amended many legal acts pertaining to the Information and Security Service, Audit Chamber, Electoral Code, etc. However, haste told on the revised documents’ quality. Although an attempt was made to improve cooperation between state organs and the civil society, a mechanism of such cooperation remains quite complicated”.

The Euromonitor authors believe that for ensuring a success in the Action Plan realization, the European Union should take a more active part in this work, and should render organizational and financial assistance to this republic. Euromonitor reports will be issued quarterly.

The Moldovan Government also follows the EU-Moldova Action Plan realization. Last September and November, the Cabinet submitted its two progress reports, and is now preparing the 2005 Annual Report. In its turn, the European Union will be drawing up its Action Plan monitoring reports every two years.