Moldova – Mme Catherine Colonna signs bilateral agreements on the occasion of President Macron’s visit (15 Jun. 2022)

On the occasion of President Macron’s visit to Moldova on 15 June 2022, the first visit by a French head of State since Jacques Chirac visited Chişinău in 1998, Mme Catherine Colonna, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and her Moldovan counterpart, Mr Nicu Popescu, signed a bilateral taxation agreement. This new agreement is an important step forward in the relationship of trust between our two countries and will help strengthen ties on the economic and financial fronts. It will provide a treaty framework for eliminating double taxation vis-à-vis cross-border business operations and various forms of individual income. It will prevent abuses, tax avoidance and tax evasion, in accordance with the most recent international standards.

France is one of the very first countries to invest in Moldova, with €124 million of French investment stock in 2019, and several large-scale projects under way. Trade between France and Moldova is steadily increasing and the taxation agreement will develop this and ensure the legal security of economic operators.

The ministers also signed an intergovernmental agreement on the activities of the French Development Agency (AFD) group in Moldova: this agreement, which lays the foundations for establishing the AFD, Proparco and Expertise France in Moldova, paves the way for concrete partnerships between our two countries. The AFD group is already fully mobilized to provide a response to the crisis linked to the consequences of the war in Ukraine and support Moldova in its sustainable, fair convergence towards European Union standards.

As it pledged, in particular at the donors’ conference held in Berlin on 5 April as part of the Moldova Support Platform, France today also signed off a €15-million budget support loan for Moldova to help the country deal with the economic and social consequences of the conflict in Ukraine.