Moldovan government, parliament consolidate efforts to remove arrears in association agreement’s implementation

Chisinau, 11 March /MOLDPRES/-The Moldovan parliament and government consolidate their efforts and synchronize their actions to remove arrears in the implementation of the association agreement as soon as possible. The parliament’s leadership, along with the heads of its standing commissions and members of the cabinet, held a meeting today to discuss legislative and governmental priority reforms, the parliament’s communication and public relations department has reported.

According to Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu, the parliament’s legislative priorities for its spring session are included in the legislative programme aimed to ensure the fulfillment of commitments provided in Moldova-EU Association Agreement for 2015-2016, according to which the Moldovan parliament shall approve 137 legislative documents within these two years. So far, it has managed to adopt 14 draft laws in final reading, while 29 more are still under legislative discussion.

“We succeeded to adopt more draft laws on Moldova’s EU agenda during the parliament’s current spring session than we did throughout its entire fall session. We are moving forwards and sped up the synchronization of governmental and parliamentary agendas, and therefore, results are visible,” Candu noted.

At the same time, in early March 2016, the parliament and the government carried out a road map of the priority actions to be taken, in order to boost up reforms. The document includes a consolidated list of immediate actions, commitments and concrete implementation deadlines to face the challenges signaled by the EU Foreign Affairs Council, as well as other development partners. The priorities include measures to curb corruption, implement the justice reform, ensure mass media freedom, enforce the public administration reform, consolidate financial-banking market’s independence, investigate bank fraud and create an attractive investment climate.

“The road map includes ambitious commitments to modernize and reformate Moldova, jointly made by the Moldovan government and parliament. It is an intense action programme aimed to enforce the provisions of the association agreement, due to be implemented by the end of the parliament’s spring session. We plan on implementing 90 per cent of these actions in March and April 2016,” Candu added.

The speaker noted that the parliament was going to create an institutional mechanism to coordinate the EU integration process. To this effect, the parliament’s standing bureau will examine the draft law on the creation of an EU integration board/council next week. 

Prime Minister Pavel Filip emphasized that the joint activity of the Moldovan government and parliament was continuously improving through synchronizing their agendas and efforts. “Our work pace is fast. The cabinet succeeded to approve more documents, which had also been approved by the parliament due to our well synchronized activity,” Filip said.

The last joint meeting of the Moldovan parliament and government was held in mid February 2016.

(Editor A. Raileanu)