PACE to continue monitoring of Mldova

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has decided to continue its monitoring of the Republic of Moldova, but says it will consider the possibility of moving to post-monitoring dialog should expected reforms be carried out.

In a Resolution based on a report by PACE Co-Rapporteurs Lise Christoffersen (Norway, SOC) and Piotr Wach (Poland, EPP/CD), the Assembly acknowledged Moldova’s progress and continuous commitment to complying with Council of Europe standards, but pointed out that “a series of fundamental issues” still need to be addressed by the country.  

The European parliamentarians called for “a political culture that focuses on the separation of powers, respect for checks and balances, de-politicization of the state institutions and law enforcement”, but also promoting human rights and countering discrimination.

Though representatives of the ruling coalition in Moldova were doing their utmost to complete the monitoring and to proceed to a higher, post-monitoring stage, or at least to soften up some formulations in the Resolution text, most of the proposed amendments were voted down by the Assembly Session.

The so-called ‘compromise variant’ did not take into account, either, the demand by opposition Communist Party to preserve “tough formulations” from the draft Resolution that was made public a few weeks ago.    

In the words of Communist MP Grigore Petrenco, Deputy Chairperson of the Unified European Left group in the PACE, who strongly criticized the Moldovan authorities, “It was only thank to the CoE structures’ monitoring that many violations of democratic norms in Moldova were stopped or prevented”.     

“Monitoring completion is fraught with serious consequences for the functioning of democratic institutions in our country. We want to live in a full-bodied, free and democratic Moldova, where the rule of the people really triumphs, not the rule of oligarchs over the nation and over the people’s will”, Grigore Petrenco stated from the PACE rostrum. He perceived the PACE Report on Moldova as a mirror, which the Moldovan authorities “should not blame for its showing a crooked face”.    

Adapted from Infotag