One of the advantages of the Association Agreement is closer cooperation with the EU, and thus a larger volume of grant aid. For example, Armenia, which has not signed such an agreement with the EU, receives from the EU half as much financial resources per capita for the development of local projects as Moldova. During the last 15 years Moldova has received from the EU 1 billion Euros in the form of grant aid.

Brussels and EU countries support both small and large projects. Grigorii Kissa, a young entrepreneur from Comrat, was able to purchase equipment for his heating briquette workshop in 2017 with EU support. Today his business is developing successfully and he even plans to expand it.

We transferred his story to a video, which also came out of European funding within the project “EU in Moldova: Perceptions and Reality” implemented by the Berlin Institute for European Politics in partnership with the Institute for Strategic Initiatives of Moldova (IPIS) and the Institute for European Policies and Reforms of Moldova (IPRE) from July 2019 to June 2020 with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office.