On 26 June, Parliament voted, in the first reading, on a bill connecting the Republic of Moldova to the European system for exchanging social security data, Parliament announces. The headline sounds technical and remote. Behind it, however, lies a very concrete question for tens of thousands of Moldovans who have worked abroad, many of them from Ungheni district: what happens to the years worked there when retirement comes.
What was actually voted
The bill, drafted by the Ministry of Labour and the National Social Insurance House, creates the legal framework for coordinating social security systems with European Union states and for connecting to EESSI — the system through which institutions exchange files on pensions, unemployment, sickness or family benefits electronically. According to the European Commission, EESSI links around 3,400 institutions across 32 countries and replaces paper forms.
Two points are essential, so that no false expectations arise. First, this is only the first reading — a second will follow, and the text may still change. Second, even if passed in final form, the bill takes effect only upon the Republic of Moldova’s accession to the European Union — that is, not tomorrow, but at the end of a road that does not yet have a date. For a present-day pensioner in Ungheni, the law itself changes nothing immediately.
The mechanism that already matters: aggregation
What actually helps a real person is not the future EESSI, but a mechanism already in operation: the aggregation of insurance periods. CNAS explains it with a simple example: if the insurance record in Moldova is 14 years and 9 months and a further 5 years in another country, the periods add up and the person becomes entitled to a pension — even if in a single country they would not have reached the minimum. Each state then pays only for the years worked on its territory, and the pension is transferred to the beneficiary’s place of residence.
For an Ungheni resident, the states that most often count are the neighbouring destinations. With Romania, the social security agreement has been in force since 2011. With Italy — the emblematic destination of Moldovan migration — the agreement was signed in Rome in October 2024 and entered into force on 1 September 2025. At the moment it took effect, the Minister of Labour summed up the stakes:
After many years of waiting and a great deal of negotiating effort, we can finally give our citizens in Italy the reassurance that they will be able to receive pensions that reflect their contributions. Alexei Buzu, Minister of Labour and Social Protection
In all, Moldova has 18 such agreements already in force, out of 20 signed. As of 1 January 2025, some 3,300 Moldovans living abroad were receiving pensions from Moldova through these agreements — most of them in Germany (1,054) and Romania (551).
Why it matters precisely for Ungheni
This is where the national story becomes local. Ungheni district has lost more than a fifth of its population in a single decade — 74,507 residents in 2025, by preliminary data, against 96,292 in 2014 — and has 19,709 pensioners. It is the kind of ageing, depopulated district where every family has someone gone abroad for work, frequently to Italy, caring for the elderly. For these people, the question “what happens to the years worked there” is not abstract.
How many Ungheni residents are affected cannot be said precisely, and it is fair to acknowledge it: the National Bureau of Statistics does not publish the number of workers abroad or of remittances at district level. Nationally, the data show the order of magnitude — around 83,000 people gone for work in 2023 and transfers from abroad weighing about a tenth of the country’s economy. Proportionally, a district like Ungheni, with above-average emigration, is among the most exposed to this reality.
The other side: what it does not yet solve
Enthusiasm should be tempered. Integration into the European system, voted now, produces no effect until accession — so, for now, it is a preparation, not a change. Real help today comes from the bilateral agreements, not from EESSI; and these cover only the states with which Moldova has concluded an agreement. Anyone who worked in a country without an applicable agreement remains, for now, uncovered. What connecting to EESSI adds, after accession, is digitalisation — files exchanged electronically, faster, without stacks of paper and trips.
This article is based on Parliament’s statement, the European Commission’s explanations of EESSI, the statements of the Ministry of Labour and CNAS on bilateral agreements and the aggregation of periods, and National Bureau of Statistics data on the population and pensioners of Ungheni district. The exact number of Ungheni residents who worked in the European Union is not available at district level; national figures are used as a benchmark and flagged as such.