President’s message at reception held on Europe Day

Your Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Anniversaries – such as that of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 – are always a good opportunity for reflection. 

For four years now, the Republic of Moldova has been firmly following the European path. A path we chose because, for us, it represents an existential guarantee of peace, freedom and democracy. 

This is a path on which we have managed to make important steps thanks to an unprecedented mobilization. Civil servants, members of civil society organizations, journalists, entrepreneurs, people who work day by day to turn the objective of joining the European Union into reality. 

And we have all understood that we cannot afford to slow down the pace – a pace whose main challenge remains that we are dealing with a marathon, but must move as if it were a sprint. 

But perhaps this very intense effort and the natural focus on the immediate stages of the process oblige us, from time to time, to return to a deeper question: what is, in fact, the essence of the European project and how do we keep it alive in our consciousness? 

Moreover, I believe this is a responsibility that concerns our entire continent – both member states and candidate countries alike. 

Of course, in our country as well, discussions about the European agenda are often dominated by rather technical aspects: conditionalities, reforms, standards, negotiations, legislation. Just as, within the European Union, public debate often focuses on sectoral policies, on concrete dossiers or on differences in positioning between states.

We often say – and rightly so – that we are diligently doing our “homework”. And we truly are. This is also confirmed by the European Commission.

But the truth is that we cannot build enthusiasm solely around the idea of “homework”. After all, how many of us remember our childhood homework with too much enthusiasm?

This is why I believe we need to talk more about the deeper meaning of this common effort. About what we, Europeans, are trying to build – and especially why?

The European Union was not born as a bureaucratic exercise and was not built around directives or regulations. The European project was born from a painful historical lesson and from the conviction that peace on the continent cannot be maintained without reconciliation between countries and peoples, without solidarity, without trust and without bonds strong enough to make war literally impossible.

This is the belief that lay at the foundation of Robert Schuman’s proposal, 76 years ago, to pool coal and steel production. 

An idea both simple and revolutionary: states that cooperate closely, whose economies and societies become interconnected, and can no longer be pushed towards the horrors of bloody conflagrations.

This remains, to this day, the essence of a united Europe.

A community built on cooperation instead of confrontation.

On respect for human dignity.

On the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.

And on the conviction that diversity is not a weakness, but an advantage.

I believe we must do more – in the Republic of Moldova and throughout Europe – to anchor these ideas in society. We should talk more about them in schools and universities. In the media. In all communities. 

Especially now, when war has returned to our continent and democracies are under increasing pressure, this European memory becomes even more important. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

We cannot speak about the importance of the European project without also remembering what its absence has meant.

This is why the memory of 9 May 1950 must be nurtured not only by recalling the founding moment of the Schuman Declaration, but also by speaking about what happened after that day in those countries on the continent where the European project arrived only much later.

While Western Europe began to build, through cooperation and reconciliation, a space of freedom and prosperity, in Eastern Europe there followed decades of dictatorship, fear, subjugation and isolation. While in the West societies became ever more open and citizens increasingly in control of their own destiny, in the East millions of people were deprived of fundamental freedoms, of the right to opinion or initiative, and many paid a heavy price for fighting for them. 

Therefore, for the states of Eastern Europe, including for the Republic of Moldova, the promise of the European project also has a profound dimension of moral and historical reparation, which we must talk about.

When people from our part of Europe dared to look beyond the Iron Curtain, their enthusiasm was not fueled by regulations or directives, but by the image of freedom, by the idea of a society in which people could speak freely, travel freely, create and hope without fear.

And I believe this remains, to this day, the real power of attraction of the European project.

Because we live in a world in which global competition is not only economic or technological, but also a competition between models of society. And authoritarianism comes with rules and with the promise of stability. But only democracy offers something essential: the individual’s freedom to live their life according to their own aspirations, in a society that respects their dignity.

It is a promise that continues to inspire. And we have the duty, through the way we speak about Europe and through the way we continue to build it, to restore to it the brightness and strength it deserves.

Thank you, and happy Europe Day!