While citizens of Moldova are being told to tighten their belts, the government has decided to expand the staff of the State Chancellery by 56 positions at once.
On March 18, the cabinet approved an increase in the number of employees from 323 to 379. The initiative, justified by references to European integration, has already raised questions among the opposition and experts.
More Officials, More Spending
According to the resolution, the central office of the State Chancellery will grow by 56 positions. Government Secretary General Alexei Buzu explained this by saying the country now has to carry out “even more complex reforms” than those it has faced so far.
As part of his justification, he also referred to recent praise for Moldovan reforms from European Commissioner Marta Kos.
The price of the decision is 20.7 million lei from the state budget this year alone. Of that amount, 15.8 million lei will go toward salaries for the new employees from March to December, 2.5 million lei will cover their business trips, and another 2.4 million lei will be spent on ensuring “proper working conditions.”
Staff Numbers Have More Than Doubled
The dynamics are especially striking. As expert Anatolii Tkaci calculated, in 2020 the staff of the State Chancellery numbered 202 people, while as of January 1, 2021, only 176 were actually employed.
Today, the number in question is already 379. That is an increase of more than twofold in five years.
And this comes against the backdrop of an existing government order on saving financial resources. The logic of the decision is, to put it mildly, far from obvious.
“In conditions of a budget deficit, what is interesting is not even that administrative structures seek to expand regardless of the budget,” Anatolii Tcaci commented. “It is that just five years ago the staff numbered 176 people, and now it is 379.”
Opposition Sees a Power Grab
The opposition saw in this decision not a step toward European integration, but an attempt to reshape the system of local administration.
Deputy Speaker of Parliament Vlad Batrîncea said the staff expansion has nothing to do with work related to the EU, since every ministry already has its own specialized staff.
“This expansion is meant to replace the districts, undermine local autonomy, and govern territories instead of the people’s elected representatives,” Batrîncea said. “Today the State Chancellery is engaged not in European integration, but in establishing control over the regions.”
According to him, districts have already lost powers in education, social assistance, and the management of hospitals. The next step, he argued, would be to reduce the number of districts threefold, with direct control from Chișinău.
Budget Discipline or Bureaucratic Expansion?
The situation looks contradictory, to say the least. On the one hand, there is official rhetoric about budget discipline and difficult reforms. On the other, there is the actual expansion of the bureaucratic apparatus by 20 million lei a year, money that could have been directed to other needs.
Critics see in this not so much concern for European integration as the construction of a vertical power structure, in which every district, town, and village would be governed from a single office.
How such an approach fits with the declared course toward decentralization and European standards of governance remains a major question.
