Mihai Mogildea, IPRE Deputy Director, on the reforms needed in Moldova in 2024 /// FPA Monthly Bulletin, December 2023

To a large extent, the priorities must be related to the three steps that our country still has to fulfil from the nine recommendations of the European Commission from June 2022. The three conditionalities relate to completing the process of appointing the heads of key institutions from the justice, but also of the general prosecutor.

At the same time, there is another conditionality related to the strengthening of anti-corruption institutions, and here probably the European Union is expecting a good organization of the development process of the Anti-Corruption Court, as it was conceptualized by the Moldovan authorities.

Another conditionality refers to the oligarchization plan, which includes several steps that need to be completed. So, these are the priority actions until the end of March.

According to the preliminary calendar sent by the European Union, at the beginning of next year, the process of examining the conformity of the national legislation with the European one with regard to several chapters is going to start. It will most likely start with the justice chapters. From the preliminary discussions, the understanding is that there are two other chapters that will be addressed. This is about chapter 8 on competition, and chapter 7 on the intellectual property.

Regarding the above-mentioned chapters, the actual screening process will begin in January. I expect that one of the priorities will be strengthening the institutions and capacities of the authorities in the field of national security. Here, together with the approval of the National Security Strategy, other sectoral documents are to be adopted. I am referring to the new Military Strategy and the sectoral strategies that need to be adapted to the National Security Strategy.

At the same time, we hope that the Center for Combating Disinformation and Strategic Communication will become operational and start producing the results expected by everyone. According to the director of the Center, Ana Revenco, the Center has to become operational towards the end of March. This means that, at the end of next year, we will already be able to draw the first conclusions about what this Center succeeded and failed to do in the context of the presidential elections that should take place in 2024.