The Ungheni Tourist Information Centre has officially launched its first guided walking route through the city — 17 stops at cultural, historical, architectural and spiritual landmarks, from the „Eiffel” bridge over the Prut to the cathedral. The tour lasts 1.5–2 hours, is guided, runs Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, and requires a prior booking.
On 2 July, in Bucharest, the contract was signed for the final section of the “Union” Motorway (A8) — the 15.5 km between Iași and the Prut, but also, for the first time, 4.7 km of motorway on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, from the future bridge at Ungheni to the town's bypass. The works on the Moldovan bank, worth around 64 million euros, are fully covered by the Romanian side, through the European SAFE programme. It is the missing piece in the file of the Ungheni bridge — but the motorway stops at Ungheni, not at Chișinău, and the timeline remains long.
At the Ungheni District Council, representatives of the Ministry of Labour and of the Farmers' Federation trained the district's agricultural producers on e-Zilier — the electronic register in which, since 1 June 2026, every seasonal worker must be logged before picking up a hoe, with an electronic signature and under threat of a fine if they are not entered in time. The platform promises less red tape and, for the first time, pension credit for day labourers. The local stakes are high: the district works some 30,000 hectares but has only around 1,200 formal agricultural employees — a sign that the bulk of fieldwork is precisely the seasonal kind the platform is bringing into the open. Hanging over it all is a separate tax proposal for 2027 that would raise contributions for day labourers from 0% to 21%.
Today, 2 July, marks 195 years since the birth of Alexander Bernardazzi — Chișinău's chief architect in the second half of the 19th century and the author of dozens of landmark buildings, who designed and gifted the people of Ungheni the plan for the “St. Alexander Nevsky” Cathedral, built in 1903–1905 and now an episcopal cathedral. A street in the Tineretului district has borne his name since 2005. A bonus: the story comes with a correction — Bernardazzi was not born in Saint Petersburg, as often stated, but in Pyatigorsk, in the Caucasus — and a curiosity: that same street once carried the name of another great Bessarabian architect.
A bill from the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, now in first reading in Parliament, seeks to bar from working with children anyone convicted of offences against them — but also those under criminal proceedings, with suspension from duty as soon as prosecution begins. At every hiring in a school, kindergarten, sports club or camp, a detailed criminal record certificate, a sworn declaration and a psychiatric certificate would become mandatory. In the Ungheni district, the measure affects a network of over 1,270 teachers — at a moment when the district is entering the new year with dozens of vacant posts. The bill has firm backing from the Ombudsman for children's rights, but also two serious objections: the presumption of innocence and the risk of stigmatising people who ever consulted a psychiatrist.
The government has approved a package that breaks an old condition: support for trafficking victims will no longer depend on their status in a criminal case — assistance comes as soon as there are 'reasonable indications' that a person was exploited. The bill, drafted by the Ministry of Justice to align the law with a European directive due 15 July 2026, now goes to Parliament. Against this backdrop, Moldova remains on 'Tier 2' in the U.S. trafficking report, with 149 victims identified in 2024 — fewer than in 2023. For Ungheni, a border district on the Prut and on the route of work abroad, the real stake is for protection to reach the villages too, where services arrive with difficulty.
Ten benches have been installed in the village of Costuleni — rest spots for all ages. The need was flagged by the local elderly mutual-support group, and the benches came through a partnership between the natives' association, Costuleni City Hall and HelpAge Moldova, under a project funded by the German government. A small gesture, in a district where nearly a quarter of residents are over 60.
More than 8,000 teachers across the country — from kindergarten staff to high-school teachers and mentors — can join a new round of free digital training through the DigiProf programme, launched by the Ministry of Education with EU support. The training is free and runs in Romanian and Russian. For Ungheni district, which enters the school year with one of the country's largest teacher shortages, the bet is on the teachers already at the blackboard.
Together with the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iași, the Ungheni District Council leads the cross-border MedAccess project, funded through Interreg NEXT Romania–Republic of Moldova. Of the 1.18 million euros, 678,800 go to Ungheni district. The money is meant to bring CAD/CAM technology to the regional dental centre, a mobile dental ambulance for isolated villages and a telemedicine platform, by July 2027. It is the third EU health project linking Ungheni to Iași.
