Underlining the EU’s unwavering support for Moldova on its accession path and welcoming the “significant” progress made, the European Council on Thursday 23 October encouraged the country, the Council and the European Commission to move work on the accession process forward, “in line with the merit-based approach”.
In its conclusions, the European Council takes due note of the Commission’s assessment that the ‘Fundamentals’ - the first to be opened and the last to be closed - ‘Internal Market’ and ‘External Relations’ clusters are ready to be opened.
In addition, a few days after the parliamentary elections in Moldova (see EUROPE 13719/15), the European leaders congratulate the authorities “for the firm commitment to and effective measures for safeguarding the integrity of the recent electoral process and for ensuring free and fair elections, despite sustained hybrid activities carried out by Russia to undermine the country’s democratic institutions”.
They pledged that the EU would continue to work closely with Chisinau to strengthen the country’s resilience and stability and would seek to learn from its experience (see EUROPE 13722/3).
Already, at the end of the Foreign Affairs Council where ministers discussed the elections in Moldova, EU High Representative Kaja Kallas announced that ministers had agreed to launch an initiative to further modernise election observation methods to take account of the fact that citizens are increasingly connected.
“Social media and online content must play an even more important role in assessing the transparency and inclusiveness of elections”, she explained.
See the conclusions of the European Council: https://aeur.eu/f/j4t (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)