The First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Moldova (NBM), Vladimir Munteanu, together with the Minister of Finance, Petru Rotaru, participated in the Annual High-Level Meeting of the Economic and Financial Dialogue between the EU and the Candidate Countries, held in Brussels on 14 May 2024.

During the meeting, the NBM official presented the evolution of the macroeconomic framework and the forecasts for the coming period, referring to the monetary policy measures undertaken by the NBM to achieve the fundamental objective of ensuring price stability. The central bank official reviewed the progress in the financial-banking system and highlighted the Republic of Moldova's aspiration to align with European standards by signing the application for Moldova's accession to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The NBM First Deputy Governor also stressed the importance of the support to Ukraine for security and resilience, which also ensures the stability of the Republic of Moldova.

The meeting is organised annually in the context of preparing candidate countries to meet the economic criterion for EU membership, which requires the existence of a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces within the EU single market. Representatives of the Republic of Moldova attended the event for the first time.

The Economic and Financial Dialogue between the EU and the candidate countries is a high-level multilateral dialogue platform that brings together finance ministers from EU countries, representatives of the European Commission and the European Central Bank, representatives of line ministries and central banks of the candidate countries. It provides a permanent framework for coordinating, guiding, and monitoring the implementation of economic policies in the candidate countries in line with EU standards and practices.

At the heart of the annual Economic and Financial Dialogue between the EU and each candidate country is the Candidate Country's Economic Reform Programme, which contains medium-term macroeconomic forecasts, budgetary plans for the next 3 years and a structural reform agenda. To support candidate countries' efforts to meet the economic criterion, in 2015, the EU strengthened its dialogue with them on economic governance by launching the annual Economic Reform Programme (ERP) exercise for candidate countries. These programmes prepare candidate countries for their future participation in the European Semester - the EU framework for coordinating and monitoring the economic and social policies of EU countries.