For Moldova, European option is not an A or B variant, this choice is not done for Europe but for our citizens, Prime Minister Pavel Filip has said in an interview for PRIME TV. 

"We want the living standards of citizens in Moldova to correspond to ones in EU member states", said PM Pavel Filip.  

More details in the PRIME interview

Journalist Alexei Lungu: What are the your conclusions after the Association Council, after messages from the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and from the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Johannes Hahn. Sometimes the messages seemed to be like a warning. 

PM Pavel Filip: In order to correctly characterize these messages, it is good to know what the messages of the governing act were at the beginning, we are talking about the beginning of 2016, that's why everything is in comparison. My feeling is that this Association Council, which is already the Fourth Association Council of the Republic of Moldova - the European Union.

I already attend the 3rd meeting and I felt like talking to friends, friends do not always talk well. We have noted the progress made by the Republic of Moldova with reference to the Reform Agenda, which has been implemented, referring to our relations with the International Monetary Fund and the implementation of the program we have with this institution. The progress we have made on other dimensions, which are still problematic, we are talking about justice, bank fraud, talks around the electoral code.

It seemed to me that we had very great discussion in this meeting, all progresses were noted and necessary things were also indicated. 

Journalist Alexei Lungu: How did the messages of the two officials seem to you: critical, neutral or encouraging?

PM Pavel Filip: We have pragmatic relations with the EU and the messages seemed right to me. There is, of course, also the encouragement. I would not say that there is a critical part, we talked about the things to move faster, the high expectations regarding the investigation of the bank fraud, about the implementation of the Commission's recommendations from Venice, if we were to go back to changing the electoral code.

And it is natural, because within the country there are divergences, there are the opposition parties that always criticize, and these messages are always transmitted also in Brussels. We receive them, we do as we think it is, because it is our country and we know very well the reality in the Republic of Moldova, we know what we had in the discussions with the European officials in this period of government.

We did not talk about all results registered but only about two things: we started from banking crisis in 2016 to European investment in the banking system, Banca Transilvania and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; we started this government act from a very low trust of Moldovan citizens in the EU, and now we are talking about an unprecedented trust of the Moldovan people in the EU.

We don't say we don't have more things to do, on the contrary, we're aware that lots of things to do, additionally, we made some steps in our opinions in the right correction because we have good results now. 

There's still lots of work which helps us continue these reforms, for European option is not an A or B variant, this choice is for our citizens not for the EU.  

We want the living standards of citizens in Moldova to correspond to ones from the EU member states. 

We are not making the reforms for the EU. From the achievements we're reached, some are parts of reforms initiated by us and some is yet to be carried out.