APE staff

Twenty years after becoming independent, Moldovas independence, sovereignty and democracy are still in danger. The threats have not been removed from the countrys agenda. They continue to be powerful and can influence the internal and foreign policy course, Victor Chirila, executive director of the Foreign Policy Association (APE), said in a meeting of the Associations Press Club.

Combating of corruption is one of the main conditions that Moldova must fulfill in order to come closer to the European Union, Polish Ambassador to Moldova Bogumil Luft said in a meeting of the Press Club of the Foreign Policy Association.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and civil society look with great hope at the Eastern Partnership summit that will take place in Poland in September.

*Transcript of a radio broadcast, from July 10th2011, produced by the Foreign Policy Association (APE) in collaboration with Imedia News and Analysis Agency and with the assistance of the German Foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). The broadcast is aired on Radio Vocea Basarabiei every Sunday.

The new European Neighborhood Policy presented officially by the European Commission contains new emphases as regards democracy. The European Union says stress will be laid on the democratic dimension as it will be hard to create a zone of stability, security and prosperity in the neighboring countries without stable democracy. But this new approach is in fact not new. It is a mainly a déjà vu and the European officials should be told this openly. The conclusions were formulated in a Press Club meeting of the Foreign Policy Association (APE).

European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) is an EU foreign policy instrument by which the latter aims to create an area of security and prosperity around it. ENP was launched in 2004 and comprises 16 countries from North Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe, including Moldova. After 7 years of implementation, the ENP is far from achieving its strategic objective. In the last three years, several developments have questioned the efficiency and capabilities of the ENP, both on its Eastern and Southern dimensions. Among negative evolutions we can mention the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008, expansion of authoritarian drifts in most the Eastern Partnership countries, flagrant violation of fundamental human rights in Belarus, the violent suppression of peaceful protests in Chisinau in April 2009, and Minsk in December 2010, the worsening of economic and democratic conditions in states from North Africa and the Middle East, which led eventually to the outbreak of civil war and popular uprisings in Libya, etc... These and other negative trends have determined the EU to start the ENP reevaluation.

On June 10, the Russian ambassador Valeri Kuzmin tried once again the limits of the Chisinau authoritys pragmatic patience. Taking advantage of the reception organized with the occasion of Russias national day, he gave the word to the Transnistrian region representative Vladimir Yastrebchak, presenting him no more, no less, as foreign minister of Transnistria”. To his surprise, but also to ours, the proverbial patience of the Moldovan diplomats has broken”, as they left the reception as a sign of protest. No less surprising was the gesture of American and European diplomats present at the event, that followed the act of dignity and courage of our diplomats.

Igor Munteanu, Moldovan Ambassador to the United States

U.S. Senator John McCain and Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat meet in Chisinau.

Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi says the European Union no longer suspects Bucharest of promoting a "hidden agenda" in regard to Moldova, RFE/RL's Moldovan Service reports.

There are preconditions for the official Transnistrian conflict settlement talks in the 5+2 format to be resumed in Moscow in June, executive director of the Foreign Policy Association (APE) Victor Chirila said Tuesday. According to him, the foreign partners of the official Chisinau should find levers to make Tiraspol return to the negotiating table and accept that the granting of a special legal status to the Transnistrian region within Moldova is the only possible outcome of the talks.

On June 5, 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russias President Dmitry Medvedev signed the Russian-German Memorandum of Meseberg, under which the EU and Russia are to create a joint Foreign Policy and Security Committee at the level of ministers, with the Transnistrian conflict to become a major subject in the Councils agenda. It will be soon a year of this date, but the committee has not been yet set up. Moscow considers that the ball is in the court of Brussels, which should respond to the proposals submitted by it last summer, concerning the work of the committee proposed by Merkel and Medvedev in Meseberg.

EU Press release

State Secretary Bogdan Aurescu is delivering a speech within the panel Republic of Moldova's Place within the Eastern Partnership. To Set a Pattern for...

The two premiers delivered speeches within the session titled "European Integration and Moldova. Challenges, obstacles, prospects". Vlad Filat said that this forum clearly proves the intensity of the Moldovan-EU dialogue, noting that Moldova managed to establish cooperation ties with the European Union based on democratic values.