between the levels of public administration or between the administrative-territorial units. The third main challenge is poor motivation and almost completely missing resources. Regionalisation reform needs to take into account also sectorial considerations. In Moldova the very basic of local infrastructure is yet to be built. Many properties and services are in precarious conditions due to the lack of funds for local infrastructure. Local, national and international funds are extremely limited. When there is no proper local infrastructure in place, it seems to be rather hasty to all of a sudden create a regional one. Besides, some reluctance and lack of traditions, there is a rather limited political will which is also complemented by lack of funds to motivate cooperation and regionalisation. As a more practical approach, very recently in 2020 was elaborated - though not yet approved - the concept of growth poles. Within the regionalisation initiatives, the concept tends to provide 6 towns (2 in each region - North, Center and South) with important funding dedicated to the development of regional infrastructure and regional business attraction centers.
2.4 The development of local government reform: challenges and opportunities National and international initiatives 1. Currently the majority of strategies and policy documents (decentralisation strategy, action plan, Roadmap of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe) have all expired; 2. The current governmental program does not provide for LG reform and decentralisation as a priority. Being in an emergency situation and with a limited time horizon - for one year at most until the presidential elections – the government solves mostly critical issues related to the pandemic crisis; 3. There are no proclaimed reforms in local governance apart from a timid renew of previous contemplations of administrative-territorial reform, which so far, cannot be considered as a serious
intention; 4. On the background of the already expired Roadmap for Decentralisation Reform, signed between the Government of Moldova, CALM and Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, a new one was prepared. This new Roadmap sets out the concrete actions on all the problematic areas of local democracy mentioned in the latest Council of Europe Monitoring report on local democracy in Moldova from April 4, 2019; 5. Several important initiatives/programs touching upon the local level were designed and are currently under implementation by USAID, Swiss SDC, GIZ, World Bank and Government of Norway; 6. There are also several recent resolutions, studies and recommendations including on the state of local democracy and local governance by European Commission, European Parliament, EU Committee of the Regions, CORLEAP, CEMR/PLATFORMA, and NALAS.
Main challenges and opportunities for future reforms In addition to the existing challenges, the short- and long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly a major issue that affects the current stage and opportunities for decentralisation reform in Moldova. The previously existing challenges for LG reform include the lack of political will and capacities of the central government, poor culture of dialogue between the central government and local governments, poor understanding of the central government on the basics of local governance - local autonomy and local democracy with all layers of central public administration, political instability in the country, lack of national, local and international funding for large scale reforms. With the pandemic crisis all these previously existing challenges have aggravated significantly while many new issues connected with the crisis have emerged. The following are the key ones: 1. The political, economic and financial influence of the financial crisis at levels unseen before – may result in extremely escalated political battles at central level in aftermath of the crisis with a risk of bringing
23
