Parliament granted the vote of confidence to the Cabinet led by Vasile Tofan on Tuesday, 21 July, and the next day the ministers took the oath of investiture. Together with the vote, the Government’s programme of activity, “European economy, efficient state” (Economie europeană, stat eficient), was also approved — the 147-page document that sets out what is to be done, with what money and by when, in the coming years.
For a district like Ungheni, with a stack of files that depend exclusively on government decisions, the question is not what the programme promises in general, but what it says about the things that are waiting here. The district appears five times in the whole document. Every time, it is about transport.
The five mentions
The first appears in the sectoral vision of the infrastructure chapter:
The Republic of Moldova will advance the strategic projects for connection to the TEN-T network, including the road link with the A8 Motorway, the electrification of the Iași-Ungheni railway connection and the development of the Berești multimodal logistics hub. Government programme “European economy, efficient state”, page 81
The second, in the list of measures: “advancing the Ungheni-Chișinău-Odesa road link, including the design and construction of the first motorway section and the development of the link with the A8 Motorway in Romania”. The third: “delivering the electrified Iași-Ungheni railway connection and preparing the Berești multimodal logistics hub”. The fourth is the bridge: “Launching the construction of four bridges over the Prut: Ungheni-Ungheni, Costești-Stânca, Leca-Fălciu, Bărboieni-Răducăneni”.
The fifth is the most important, because it is the only one with a deadline. In the indicators table on page 88, the row “TEN-T strategic projects” has as its objective by 2029: “First works/procedures advanced for the motorway at Ungheni, the electrified Iași-Ungheni railway connection and the Berești hub”.
Three files in a single row, with the same deadline and the same verb. Not “completed”, but “advanced”.
Why the word “advanced” matters
Each of the three projects already has a concrete history, documented over the past weeks. The contract for the last section of the A8 Motorway, including the 4.7 kilometres on the Moldovan bank, from the future bridge to the Ungheni bypass, was signed in Bucharest on 2 July. The electrification of the Iași–border line received its technical and economic indicators from the Romanian Government, with works scheduled until 2028. The feasibility study for the European-gauge railway Ungheni–Chișinău was launched in Brussels on 23 June, together with the European Commission and the European Investment Bank.
The programme does not contradict any of these projects, but nor does it give them a completion deadline. There is no kilometre figure for the Ungheni–Chișinău section, no year for completing the motorway, no budget for the bridge and no sum for the Berești hub.
The Berești logistics complex, named three times in the programme, is in the municipality of Ungheni: according to the Ministry of Economic Development, it is being built at the Berești railway station, on about 18 hectares of state land, with a projected capacity of around 200,000 trucks a year.
There is also a wording that leaves an open question. The programme speaks of “launching the construction” of the Ungheni–Ungheni bridge, while the structure of the bridge is due to be ready towards the autumn of this year, and what is missing is the second stage — the customs post, the checkpoint and the access roads, with a 2028 horizon. The wording may refer to the road access stage, to another objective, or it may come from a list taken over as it was; the document does not go into detail.
What does not appear at all
Three things are missing from the programme.
Free economic zones. They appear nowhere in the programme, in any form — neither as an instrument of economic policy, nor by name. The only standalone occurrence of the word “zone” in the whole document is “Security Zone”, in the chapter on the Transnistrian region; elsewhere the word “zone” appears only in contexts unrelated to the free-zone regime. The programme speaks of “developing industrial and technological parks and platforms, including Moldova HiTech Park” and of “supporting business infrastructure, industrial zones, incubators and regional markets that create jobs”, but the free zone regime is not mentioned. For Ungheni, where the “Ungheni-Business” free zone is the second largest in the country by number of employees, it is an absence that carries weight.
The mechanism that pays for the motorway. The European SAFE programme, through which the Romanian side covers in full the works on the Moldovan bank, does not appear in the document.
The European gauge. The term does not appear at all, even though the study for the new Ungheni–Chișinău line had been launched a month before the programme was adopted. There is no rail speed target in the text.
The administrative reform: the district, up for restructuring
The central commitment on local administration is set out in the chapter on priorities:
Administrative-territorial reorganisation around strong mayoralties, with the fundamental restructuring of the district level and the transfer of competences, staff and assets to the new territorial-administrative units. Government programme “European economy, efficient state”, page 14
“The district level” means exactly the level at which the Ungheni District Council operates today. The programme also provides for “granting incentives to localities involved in amalgamation and inter-community cooperation”, but it contains no calendar deadline for the administrative reform and no figure — neither a target number of mayoralties, nor of districts, nor the amount of the incentives.
These figures do exist, but outside the programme. The Prime Minister said, on the same day as the vote, that the support of 3,000 lei for each inhabitant of amalgamated mayoralties will be allocated according to the established calendar, with around 170 million lei in the 2026 budget for the first stage and with the resources for the second stage in the 2027 budget. In Ungheni district, the operational deadline of 31 July for voluntary mergers was, on the day of the vote, nine days away.
Schools, hospitals, the border
In education, the programme provides for expanding the Model Schools network to 90 institutions and for “making at least 35 schools from the first wave operational”, with over 4 billion lei in schools and kindergartens. The document does not, however, contain the list of these schools by name, so it is not possible to tell from the programme how many of them fall to the district.
One calendar detail is worth noting: the “Restart in education” reform, under which schools pass into the subordination of the Ministry of Education, was approved by the Government on Wednesday, 22 July — one day after the vote on the programme. The phrase does not appear in the 147 pages, and the word “founder” does not appear at all.
In health, the programme is explicit on a point that concerns the district directly:
Regionalisation will not mean the mechanical closure of district hospitals, but the redefinition of the role of each institution according to the needs of the population, access time, case volume, available competences and safety requirements. Government programme “European economy, efficient state”, page 130
The regional hospitals named in the document are only those in Bălți and Cahul. Ungheni does not appear in the health chapter, and the programme promises “the modernisation of health centres” and the maintenance of proximity services — while the Ungheni District Council voted, on 18 June, to merge the district’s health centres from 11 to 6.
At the border, the programme gives a figure: coverage with modern technologies “will increase from 25% to 60% by 2029”, alongside “the extension of coordinated control with Romania and the standardisation of procedures to reduce waiting times”. No crossing point is named — neither Sculeni, nor Ungheni.
Who is responsible for these files
The Cabinet has, according to the official press release, 16 members and 14 ministries. For Ungheni’s files, the key ministry is that of Infrastructure and Regional Development, led by Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Bolea — the motorway, the railway, the bridges and the Berești hub all fall to him. Dan Perciun remains Minister of Education and Research. Health goes to Alexandru Gasnaș, Finance to Victoria Belous, and Economic Development and Digitalisation to Eugen Osmochescu.
Prime Minister Vasile Tofan comes from the private investment world: according to the official CV published by the Government, he was a senior partner and a member of the Investment Committee at the Horizon Capital fund in Kyiv, with assets under management of around 1.8 billion dollars, and before that he founded and ran a medical technology company in Boston.
This article is based on the full text of the Government’s programme of activity “European economy, efficient state”, on the official government press releases on the vote of confidence and the investiture, on the Prime Minister’s official CV, on the Ministry of Economic Development page dedicated to the Berești logistics complex, and on the Prime Minister’s statements carried by the state agency Moldpres. The number of mentions of Ungheni district and the finding that the free economic zones, the SAFE programme and the European gauge are absent result from a search of the full text of the document, carried out by the newsroom.