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Moldova, the small former Soviet republic led by pro-European
president Maia Sandu, was given the green light by the EU in
December to open negotiations on joining the 27-nation bloc,
along with neighbouring Ukraine. Both countries face a long
process involving many changes and reforms to meet EU standards.
Mihai Popsoi, appointed foreign minister in January, told
Reuters in an interview that the country remained on alert for
Russian destabilisation efforts and that it was negotiating with
partners to boost its air defence capabilities, although its
budgetary constraints made such efforts difficult.
He said Moldova had started the EU membership screening
mechanism process last week.
Screening is the process whereby the European Commission carries
out a detailed examination, together with the candidate country,
of each policy field, known as "chapters", to determine how well
the country is prepared.
Once the report is finished, the Commission then either
recommends to open negotiations directly or to require that
certain conditions – opening benchmarks - should first be met.
"We hope ... (it) will be considered as enough progress to start
to open the chapters of negotiations, to have the
intergovernmental conference before the June election because we
understand that after the election there will be several months
of settling down and we don't have days to lose, not least
months. We've lost decades," Popsoi said on the sidelines of the
Munich Security Conference.
Negotiations take place between ministers and ambassadors of the
EU governments and the candidate country in what is called an
intergovernmental conference.
Popsoi said he believed there was enough consensus within the EU
that even a potential rise in far-right representation in the
European parliament was unlikely to hinder the process.
"We tried to go above and beyond when it comes to the domestic
reform process because we know that ultimately we are not doing
it for the EU, we are doing it for the sake of our citizens, for
improving the living standards and the quality of life," he
said.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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