In 1Q2014, Moldova achieved certain progress in realization of the EU-RM Action Plan, say experts from the Association for Participatory Democracy (ADEPT) and the independent Expert-Grup analytical center, who presented their new quarterly Euromonitor issue at a news conference at Infotag.     

ADEPT Executive Director Igor Botan offered an opinion that the biggest problem of this entire Action Plan enterprise is that the Moldovan grassroots do not understand and do not feel this progress.    

Meanwhile, one of the key achievements of the Action Plan work is the realization of the E-Justice Program, which has enabled distributing litigations in courts and between judges at random i.e. without man’s interference and thus excluding the partiality factor, and adoption of the Law on Testing Professional Integrity.    

Dr. Botan said that the analysis of income/property statements by civil servants has revealed obvious differences between what is written in the statements and what the mass media are reporting.   

“More often than not, civil servants indicate inarticulate, dubious data in their statements. This is a definite sign that they ignore the laws they themselves draft and adopt”, said Igor Botan.   

ADEPT expert Polina Panaite said that from the viewpoint of media freedom, the first quarter of the year revealed problems such as e.g. attempts to exclude some television channels from cable operators’ broadcasting grids, which fact indicates a trend of restricting media freedom in Moldova.    

“Moreover, this trend is aggravated by restriction of journalists’ access to Parliament plenary sittings”, said Panaite.          

Expert-Grup Executive Director Adrian Lupusor said that the visa regime liberalization with the European Union is Moldova’s important achievement that opens new possibilities to citizens for studying and traveling in Europe.  

In her opinion, currently, in the context of Moldova’s approximation with the European Union, the chief thing for Moldova is to preserve economic relations with Russia.    

The expert said that the Association Agreement, to be signed with the European Union on June 27, “will bring a lot of advantages to our republic. For this, however, we are supposed to improve business environment and create favorable conditions for foreign investments to come”.     

Expert Denis Cenusa said that in the transport sector, the 1Q2014 revealed certain problems. One of them is the delayed reform of the National Railroad Company of Moldova (CFM) and failure to elect a new CFM Director General for quite long now.