Ion Ștefanovici, President of CAPDR, open letter to the leadership of ADR North-East and to the decision-makers concerned with the future of the Moldova Region

OPEN LETTER

To Mr. Vasile ASANDEI,

I am writing to you openly, following the joint course of the last few years and the dialogues held regarding the development direction of the Moldova Region — a subject that long ago ceased to belong to isolated persons or institutions and has become the concern of an increasingly large regional community, more engaged and more aware of its own potential.

In 2023, in Iași, the Moldova Regional Economic Forum (FERM) brought together approximately 170 participants, representing public administration, universities, the private sector, diplomacy and development organisations.

In 2024, in Vatra Dornei, participation grew to over 300 people, and at FERM 2025, also held in Vatra Dornei, more than 600 participants and 132 speakers were present, from Romania as well as from the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and the European Union.

You and your colleagues at ADR North-East participated in and were involved in two of these three stages (2023 and 2024), and this is a documented and acknowledged fact.

Looking back over the 2023–2025 period, it is impossible to ignore a clear, steady and unprecedented increase in the level of representation, engagement and institutional coalescence across the Moldova Region.

At the same time, an objective, measurable fact must be recorded:

Participation and engagement at FERM 2025 doubled compared to the 2024 edition, in a context where the leadership of ADR North-East was no longer involved in the process of organising, coordinating or guiding the event.

This development indicates, without equivocation, that the dynamic of coalescing the Moldova Region did not depend on any particular structure or person, but on a real, deep need for clarity, collaboration and a shared vision, felt by an increasing number of organisations and institutions in the region.

Following the consultations carried out through FERM 2025, the Multiannual Programmatic Document of the Moldova Region was produced, which underpins the development vision for the region for the coming period.

The 2025–2035 Action Plan prepared by CAPDR contributes directly to operationalising and implementing that vision, through concrete instruments, pilot projects and real mechanisms for interinstitutional and international cooperation.

The rift that arose between us at the beginning of 2025 was caused by factors unrelated to my person, to CAPDR or to this participatory process of regional construction.

From our side, that chapter is closed.

However, following your most recent official reply, it is clear that you have chosen a distinct path, outside this regional coalescence effort.

This choice has direct consequences for the possibility of building a functional cooperation framework:

• How can a credible partnership with ADR North-East be imagined in a strategic internationalisation process — such as organising FERM 2026 in Odesa — when there is no longer coherence, trust and functional collaboration even at the internal level in the Moldova Region?
• An increasing number of private organisations, public institutions and relevant actors in the region express reservations not about the ADR North-East institution itself, but about the current mode of leadership and decision-making at top management level — a fact that generates latent tension and the risk of real institutional blockages.

This situation was not created by us, but it cannot be ignored by us.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to state clearly:

• The development direction of the Moldova Region is established through a broad, legitimate and documented participatory process.
• No person and no institution may any longer bind the future of the Moldova Region by unilateral decisions or parallel agendas.
• CAPDR and its partners have the obligation to protect this collective process.

Consequently, an independent strategic cost–benefit analysis will be initiated, which will also include an assessment of the activities of ADR North-East departments, in relation to the region’s real potential, as well as to the opportunities exploited and those missed in recent years.

The Moldova Region needs unity, transparency and sustainable construction — not fractures of vision, institutional ambiguities, and even less programming formulas developed outside the Moldova Region, without genuine consultation of local communities and without direct reference to the concrete needs of the territory.

The new Regional Programme, which is taking shape for the 2028–2034 period, should naturally have been built around reducing the major economic and social gaps between the Moldova Region and regions such as Ilfov–Bucharest, gaps that are evident and documented.

Without a real anchoring in the territory, this objective risks remaining merely declarative.

During 2025 I spoke personally with thousands of people and with hundreds of organisations from all counties of the Moldova Region.

I listened to their needs, I understood their blockages and I anticipated solutions, which are already reflected today in the 2025–2035 Action Plan for the Moldova Region.

When I asked these people and organisations whether they had ever been consulted directly by the leadership of ADR North-East, the answer was, in most cases, negative or evasive. For many of them, the connection to regional decision-making remains an abstract notion.

In parallel, within our international cooperation networks — with partners from the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, EU member states, as well as from the Middle East and Asia — the preparation processes for joint projects aimed at developing the Moldova Region are already at an advanced stage, built on trust, constant dialogue and concrete actions.

At the same time, at CAPDR and among our partners, clear sectoral programmes have already been outlined — in tourism, education, energy, the business environment and transport infrastructure — which respond directly to the region’s priorities.

Under these conditions, it is legitimate to ask ourselves:

How could this region continue to accept a type of entrenched institutional inertia in a unilateral decision-making formula, at a moment that calls for exactly the opposite: openness, connection to realities on the ground and the capacity to build together?

What began in January 2025 as a distancing initiated by you, in your capacity as General Director of ADR North-East, ends today, in December 2025, as a definitive rupture of vision between you and me, as well as between the direction you currently represent and the regional coalescence project supported by a broad array of actors from the Moldova Region.

In these circumstances, I hereby inform you directly and without equivocation that this delineation is final on my part.

The possible resumption of collaboration between me, the structures I represent and ADR North-East can be considered only in the context of a change in the institution’s leadership, that is, upon the assumption of the General Director mandate by another person, provided that person demonstrates, through deeds, a genuine openness to dialogue, consultation and authentic cooperation with the relevant actors of the Moldova Region.

I will continue, together with our partners, to assume responsibility for defending, consolidating and affirming the Moldova Region — through transparency, cooperation and long-term vision — outside any formulas that no longer correspond to the reality and needs of the Moldova Region that we consider HOME.

Ion ȘTEFANOVICI

President, CAPDR