How to join the EU? Civil society training in Moldova

30/06/2025

The Republic of Moldova has been an official candidate for EU membership since June 2022. Two years later, accession negotiations began with the first accession conference on 25 June 2024. Since then, Moldova has been in the process of “screening”, in which the EU commission examines how well the country is prepared to adapt to the current EU law, the so-called acquis. Following this screening, negotiations will begin on the acquis chapters, which are grouped into clusters. The Republic of Moldova must explain how it will implement full harmonisation with the EU acquis. The accession treaty will then regulate possible exceptions, transitional arrangements and financial support.

In order to empower Moldovan civil society actors to actively participate in the negotiation process, the CAPACITY4EU project is implementing the second round of the EU accession negotiation training programme. After a successful first round in 2024, the second trainings series started on the 13th March 2025 in Chişinău with a new cohort. In the first training module, Adrian Ermurachi, Co-Executive Director of IPRE, provided information on the negotiation process and the opportunities for civil society organisations to participate and demand transparency from the government.

The second training module held online on 27 March 2025 used Serbia as a case study to show the opportunities and challenges that civil society organisations can face in the screening and negotiation process. As part of the working groups or as an external watchdog, they can, for example, voice the views of civil society through policy briefs, regularly evaluate the interim status of the accession process and critically accompany the work of the government through monitoring and public campaigns. A third online training module is scheduled for 10 April 2025 and will focus on successful EU communication strategies and the EU growth plan for Moldova.

A total of around 25 representatives from various organisations are taking part in the new training series.