The European Union will provide 60 million euros to Moldova for crisis management in the energy sector. The announcement was made on Wednesday, October 27th, by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“I am delighted to meet the Prime Minister of Moldova, Natalia Gavrilița, to reiterate our full support for Moldova. EU-Moldova Association Council will meet tomorrow to strengthen our cooperation. In this context, the European Commission will provide Moldova with 60 million euros to help Moldova in managing the crisis in the energy sector,” said the President of the European Commission in a post on Twitter.

Earlier, the EU announced that it is monitoring the situation in the energy sector in Moldova and is ready to provide support to the country, Ria Novosti reports.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Spînu, negotiations with Gazprom on signing a long-term gas supply contract are “difficult“, but the dialogue was resumed on Wednesday, October 27, in St. Petersburg with the Vice President of the Board, the Chairman of the Committee management of the Russian energy company Gazprom Alexei Miller. In this context, Spînu mentioned that Moldova wants to negotiate with Gazprom a fair price based on a similar formula offered to other states.

On October 21, Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spînu and Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Vladislav Kulminski visited Moscow to discuss Moldova’s supply of natural gas. Returning from Moscow, Spînu said that the offer currently proposed by the energy company in the Russian Federation is not to the advantage of Moldovan citizens. Spînu said that the asking price, which includes financial and non-financial conditions, including the payment of the historical debt on a short-term basis, is higher than the offers on the international gas markets.

Then, TASS reported that Gazprom will be able to extend the contract for transit and supply of natural gas for Moldova only if Chișinău will pay the debt worth 709 million dollars. “If the payment for gas supply will not be paid in full and a new contract will not be signed, from December 1, Gazprom will stop gas supplies to Moldova.”

Meanwhile, on October 25, the Chișinău government announced that a contract had been signed for a trial purchase of one million cubic meters of natural gas between the state-owned company Energocom and the Polish company PGNiG. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, Andrei Spînu, the tariff paid by citizens for natural gas remains unchanged.

Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița stated that the purchase price of natural gas by Energocom from the Polish company PGNiG “is a market price of around one thousand dollars per thousand cubic meters.”

On October 22, a state of emergency was declared in Moldova for the next 30 days.

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