On Monday 26 September, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy Johannes Hahn visited Chisinau, where he announced that the EU had earmarked €15 million "to support Moldova in its public administration reform".
During a press conference with Moldova's Prime Minister Pavel Filip after the signing of the financing agreement for the public administration support programme, Hahn announced: "We want to help modernise the public administration and make it more citizen friendly and transparent". He also said he would like the public administration to be less politicised.
During his visit, the commissioner called for reforms to continue in the country. "We still need to see the adoption and implementation of key reforms in the fight against corruption, as well as in the justice, banking, finance and media sectors, and as regards the investigation on bank fraud". In April 2015, the Central Bank of Moldova discovered that €927 million had disappeared from Moldovan banks. "The EU expects Moldova to deliver on its promises on obtaining concrete results", Hahn stated, calling for the implementation of priority reforms already adopted.
Returning to the subject of the presidential elections on 30 October, the commissioner said that this "democratic exercise was an important stage in the country's democratic maturity and an opportunity for regaining the trust of its citizens". He called on citizens, particularly young people, to get to the ballot box and for the political parties, candidates and media to avoid engaging in campaigns of defamation. Last year, the country experienced a serious political crisis. Pavel Filip has been in office since 20 January 2016 and is the fifth prime minister in the country since the beginning of 2015. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)