Moldovan parliament speaker says leadership manages to adopt more essential reforms to settle citizens' problems

Chisinau, 2 August /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament has managed to adopt more essential laws and reforms for the country’s modernization, Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu said at a today’s news conference on summing up the 2017 spring session, the parliament’s communication and public relations department has reported.   

“The commitment of the parliament and government, assumed through the roadmap for the priority reforms’ agenda, remains an instrument which has proved its efficiency in ensuring the good governance,” the parliament speaker said.  

Andrian Candu named several legislative packages which were defining for the spring session.   

· improvement of the legislation in the financial and banking sector

After the parliament in 2016 had adopted a legislative package, through which it brought stability to the financial and banking sector, in 2017, efforts were continued to strengthen the powers of the National Bank of Moldova and to provide better instruments for the supervision of the banking market, financial market, securities market. Discussions were organized on a new banking legislation, worked out jointly by the national banks of Moldova, Romania and the Netherlands, and subsequently the banking package was adopted, named Basel III.  

· consolidation of the energy system

The parliament adopted a new law on energy, elaborated along with experts of the European Energy Community and which provides for a better regulation of the field, through providing additional powers, which bring efficiency to the National Energy Regulatory Agency (ANRE) and strengthens the regulator’s independence.   

· regulatory reform and improvement of the business environment

By the joint efforts of the parliament and government, more controls were excluded, the control procedures were simplified and more institutions with control duties were liquidated or merged. Out of those more than 400 permissive acts, identified by National Bank experts, 150 have remained and the number of control institutions dropped from 60 to 13 plus 5 independent regulators.

At the same time, the procedure of getting the stay permit and labour permit for foreign citizens, who will make investments in Moldova and those who will manage and work in the IT sector, was simplified. Andrian Candu said that such facilities were to be applied in other fields as well.  

· improvement of the legislation in the security sector

The parliament adopted a new law on fighting terrorism, discussions on the Strategy of information security started and the international agreement, under which the NATO Liaison Office is to be opened in Moldova, was ratified.   

· fighting corruption and recovery of embezzled assets

The parliament approved the last legislative acts from the integrity package, a national plan on prevention and fight against corruption was approved and the Agency of Crime Assets Recovery was created, including the related legislation to be able to recover the assets embezzled from the banking sector.  

· social sector

The system of meal vouchers will be introduced in Moldova as well, after the parliament voted the law on meal vouchers. Thus, the system which yielded good results in many countries will provide wage earners with an untaxed supplement to the incomes and which represents, at the same time, an indirect way of fighting the tax dodging and salaries in envelopes.  

· audiovisual reform

The legislative amendments introduced the compulsoriness for broadcasters to provide at least eight hours of native products, including the increase of the number of hours in prime time, as well as clarifications as to the measurement of audiences.  At the same time, for the first time ever, the goal of improving the media legislation was delegated to the media organizations from the country. The parliament, along with the Council of Europe, created a working platform to elaborate a new legislation in the field.    

· government’s reform

According to the parliament speaker, the adoption of the concerned legislative package gave an important impetus to the modernization of the public administration and depoliticizing of the public office. “The cut in the number of ministries and the corresponding reduction of bureaucracy at the central level is expected to be soon reflected in the optimization of the work of the central public administration,” Andrian Candu said.   

· Electoral reform

”The change of the electoral system by the introduction of the mixed voting system, adopted with an important majority, represents, to my mind, a truthful electoral reform, which will get the parliament closer to the citizens and will give people occasion to elect directly a half of the MPs,” Andrian Candu said.  

The parliament speaker thanked the lawmakers and government members for the work carried out and for the results achieved in the spring session.  

Since the beginning of this year, 1,925 reports, notifications and amendments to draft legislative acts were elaborated in parliament. The parliament approved 125 laws and 47 decisions, another 135 drafts were voted in the first reading. At the same time, the parliament amended the Constitution, giving an extra guarantee to the independence of the ombudsman.  

The parliament’s 2017 spring session ended on 31 July. According to an instruction by the parliament speaker, the autumn session will start on 4 September 2017.