Mayors from Calarasi, Cruzești, Leova, Sarata Veche, Sireți and Straseni, together with representatives from the Congress of Local Authorities in Moldova and the State Chancellery exchanged experiences and good practices at the 2025 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. The Summit brought together more than 2,000 representatives of governments, civil society leaders, and policy-makers from across the world to engage in a range of discussions on reforms ranging from actions to boost transparency, civic participation in public decision-making to protecting human rights in the digital environment.

Within a session dedicated to open government reforms at the local level, Alexandru Bujoreanu, Mayor of Leova presented the experience of co-creating Leova’s Local Open Government Action Plan with the support of the Council of Europe Congress. As the first municipality in the Republic of Moldova to become member of the OGP Local Programme, he stressed the added value of this process in the context of the on-going amalgamation. Through this initiative, Leova is taking a leading role in demonstrating how open government principles can be effectively implemented at the local level and serves as a model for other municipalities who want to modernise their public services and engage citizens in their decision-making.

„The 2025 OGP Summit inspires us to transform the principles of open government into concrete actions that bring local administrations closer to citizens and increase the trust of public institutions. Open government is not an abstract vision, but a condition for democracy’s survival and this Summit motivated us to continue the efforts to building real transparency and participation, and thus an authentic democracy”, said Valentina Casian, Mayor of Strășeni.

Natalia Postica, State Chancellery representative, in a panel on national and local authorities collaboration, highlighted concrete examples of multilevel co-operation in the context of Moldova’s national Action Plan on Open Government and its added value for effectively delivering results. „The summit invites us to be more open, to communicate more with citizens and to shape a state, whose foundation is built on transparency and trust”, she stated.

The participation of the Republic of Moldova in the Summit reflects the commitment of the Moldovan authorities to promote the principles of open government and to establish international partnerships in order to better respond and serve the needs of citizens. This participation also feeds the process of development of future actions in the Republic of Moldova. Congress support to Moldova’s open government reforms also represents an important contribution to the New Democratic Pact for Europe.  

The participation of the delegation from the Republic of Moldova to the OGP Global Summit in 2025 was supported by the project “Promoting Multilevel Dialogue, Open Government, and Human Rights at the Local Level int he Republic of Moldova” (2025–2028), implemented by the Centre of Expertise for Multilevel Governance of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, as part of the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for the Republic of Moldova (2025-2028).