On the margins of the EU-Moldova Association Council, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, and the Moldovan Prime Minister, Dorin Recean, signed a security and defence partnership with the EU.
“Moldova is the first country to sign a security and defence partnership with the EU”, explained Mr Borrell after the Council, adding that other countries would follow. According to the High Representative, this partnership will strengthen the country’s resilience. “It will enable us to tackle common security challenges together, make our engagement more effective and explore new areas of cooperation”, he added. Mr Borrell highlighted security, cybersecurity, the fight against hybrid threats and capacity building.
According to an EU spokesman interviewed by Agence Europe, this partnership “aims to step up our defence and security cooperation and raise it to a strategic level, and to help Moldova improve its ability to protect its sovereignty and independence”. See the agreement: https://aeur.eu/f/ca7
In addition to this agreement, the Cooperation Council provided an opportunity to take stock of Moldova’s progress towards the EU. This was the first Council meeting since the opening of negotiations, decided on in March.
Highlighting the substantial progress made in Chisinau, the Commissioner for Enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, called for efforts to be made in the areas of judicial reform, the fight against corruption, the implementation of the deoligarchisation action plan, and the continuation of impartial investigations into the major banking fraud of 2014 and the freezing of the assets involved.
According to a European source, a large number of Member States are in favour of convening an intergovernmental conference with Moldova before the end of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council. The Netherlands has reportedly joined France, Germany and Poland in calling on the Commission to update its assessment of compliance with the criteria for officially opening negotiations with either Moldova or Ukraine so that the IGCs can be convened before the end of June (see EUROPE 13402/28).
In the margins of the Council, the EU and Moldova also signed an agreement on Moldova’s participation in the employment and social innovation strand of the ESF. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant with Mathieu Bion)