Moldova Security Forum 2026. Building Trust and Democratic Resilience. Closing remarks

Forumul de securitate Moldova 2026 se încheie cu un apel ferm pentru consolidarea încrederii publice și a rezilienței democratice

Chișinău, 9 octombrie 2026 - Experți naționali și internaționali, reprezentanți ai societății civile și înalți oficiali guvernamentali s-au reunit vineri, 9 octombrie 2026, la Chișinău, pentru sesiunile finale ale Moldova Security Forum 2026. Evenimentul a subliniat necesitatea imperativă de a consolida încrederea publicului în instituțiile statului și de a dezvolta strategii eficiente de comunicare pentru contracararea dezinformării și a amenințărilor hibride.

Ultimul panel al forumului, moderat de Brigitta Triebel, a adus în prim-plan rolul științelor comportamentale în elaborarea politicilor publice. Discuțiile au evidențiat că o democrație rezilientă nu se bazează doar pe infrastructură și legi, ci și pe un nivel ridicat de coeziune socială, empatie și comunicare autentică între stat și cetățeni.

Liliana Vițu, directorul Centrului pentru Comunicare Strategică și Combaterea Dezinformării, a punctat importanța trecerii de la simpla demontare a știrilor false la o comunicare proactivă, care să răspundă nevoilor reale ale cetățenilor.

„În momente de criză, cetățenii au nevoie de context și de explicații clare, nu doar de date seci. Nu mai este suficient să spunem că o informație este falsă; trebuie să înțelegem de ce oamenii sunt vulnerabili la acele narațiuni și să comunicăm strategic, oferind soluții și certitudini”, a declarat Liliana Vițu în cadrul panelului.

Dezbaterile au beneficiat de expertiza reprezentanților europeni, inclusiv Natalia Voutova din partea Consiliului Europei și Michal Krawczyk de la Comisia Europeană, care au subliniat că respectarea drepturilor omului și ascultarea activă a nemulțumirilor sociale sunt piloni centrali în prevenirea alunecării către autocrație. La rândul lor, experții în contracararea dezinformării au accentuat nevoia unui parteneriat solid între instituțiile de stat, mass-media independentă și organizațiile neguvernamentale pentru educarea continuă a publicului.

Sesiunea de încheiere a forumului a reunit lideri guvernamentali care au reafirmat direcția strategică a țării. Discursurile au pus accent pe necesitatea protejării libertății și pe eforturile continue de integrare europeană, procese susținute activ de partenerii transatlantici.

„Obiectivul strategic al Republicii Moldova rămâne aprofundarea cooperării cu partenerii noștri europeni și transatlantici. Aceste parteneriate sunt fundamentale pentru dezvoltarea capacităților noastre naționale. A investi în Republica Moldova înseamnă, de fapt, a investi în securitatea și stabilitatea întregii Europe”, a subliniat Mihai Popșoi, viceprim-ministru și ministru al Afacerilor Externe, în discursul său de încheiere.

Evenimentul s-a încheiat cu mesaje de susținere din partea reprezentanților Biroului de Legătură NATO și ai Ministerului Apărării, care au reiterat angajamentul comun pentru menținerea păcii, modernizarea sectorului de securitate și transformarea Republicii Moldova într-un partener puternic și stabil în regiune.

Despre Moldova Security Forum

Moldova Security Forum este o platformă de dezbatere de nivel înalt dedicată analizării provocărilor actuale de securitate din regiunea Mării Negre și din Europa. Evenimentul reunește anual factori de decizie, experți în securitate, diplomați și reprezentanți ai societății civile pentru a identifica soluții viabile în fața amenințărilor hibride, pentru a promova reziliența democratică și pentru a sprijini parcursul de integrare euro-atlantică al Republicii Moldova.

Good afternoon. Welcome back. I'm glad to have you all here in the room. As mentioned before the break, we are diving into the backbone of trust and resilience, and we will discuss in the next panel behavioral insights and how that contributes to social cohesion.

And it's my honor to invite a good friend, Dr. Brigita Tribel, to take the moderation. Please.

[Brigita Tribel] Bună ziua. Good afternoon. It's an honor for me to moderate this, one of our last panels for these two days, but I think a very, very important panel. And thank you for joining us for the third edition of the Moldova Security Forum. And thank you very much for staying with us until Friday afternoon. I think it's worthy.

My name is Brigita Tribel, I'm the Head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Office here in the Republic of Moldova. And you know, we placed with all our partners the Security Forum 2026 under the title of democratic resilience. Why? Because democracies everywhere are under pressure, and some are sliding towards autocracy.

On the other side, democratic structures often prove more resilient than expected. Moldova is a prime example. Research tells us that resilience rests not only on hard facts but also on soft skills, and this is the reason why we will discuss the soft skills of a resilient democracy today and what we can do together to strengthen our soft skills.

I'm very much, I'm very happy to welcome all our panelists, all our speakers. I would like to start with Liliana Vizu, the Director of the Center for Strategic Communication and Countering Disinformation.

I'm very happy to have with us today Natalia Vutova, the new Head of the Council of Europe Office here in Chisinau.

Coming from Brussels, Michal Krafcik, Policy Analyst, European Commission's Behavioral Insights Team. Thank you very much.

Rufin Zamfir, expert on countering disinformation. Rufin, please join us.

And Sergius, coming from Lithuania, founder of the Transparency School, chair of the International Advisory Board of Access Info Europe.

So great to see you all here. I would like to discuss with you today, you know, some two words we often use: it's trust and social cohesion when it comes to the whole society approach or to resilient democracy. And of course, somehow we have the understanding it's important to trust in institutions, in politicians. It's important to have social cohesion to strengthen our democracy.

But what does that mean for the Moldovan case, for Europe, and also, what are our learnings from that? So how can we use results of the behavioral science to really understand what is going on in our minds and why do we think like we think, or why do we decide like we decide, and why do we vote like we vote? So, I think it's a very broad topic, I know that, so but at least I would like to try to discover this topic with you a bit.

Liliana, you experienced the hybrid campaign, the cognitive warfare against Moldova in the last years firsthand. Looking back, which soft skills were the most important in keeping the Moldovan democracy resilient?

[Liliana Vizu] Well, I think it was the fact that our people, including those in diaspora, had access to good and authentic and trustworthy independent reporting and investigative journalism that revealed the way Moldova was attacked. And the fact that people had access to reliable information, it helped ensure even the trust in what the public institutions were saying. Because we remember, I personally remember a briefing, a joint briefing by the anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of National Inspectorate of Police, which was somewhere in August, and they already did this.

And before that, we had the National Council for Security, and the President said the 10 ways in which we are attacked. She explained it to the people how we were attacked, and then we had the heads of various institutions. But when Ziarul de Gardă, one leading investigative team in Moldova, showed it in a very convincing way, in a Netflix-style way, so the storytelling people had access to, this is I think when people also started to believe in what authorities were saying.

So it is very important to have, and of course, in the meantime, we had the civil society and NGOs who were doing their part of the job by explaining, by running this, again, campaigns especially in the platforms, explaining what goes on. So when you have a shared context, I don't want to say a shared truth or let's say it's a shared reality. But when you, when your people get various bits and pieces from again, various actors, which they do trust—of course, they trust more one than another, it's a legitimate choice or it's absolutely legitimate not to distrust some of them—but when they have a shared context and when they realize that this context is being manipulated, I think that was what worked and helped us.

The fact that we understood that the way we are being attacked is not just checking fakes. So the era when fakes were used to be attacked is gone. The cognitive war or the fight for people's minds and souls is now actually taking very legitimate grievances. It's absolutely legit for Moldovan people right now to worry about their welfare, protection, social protection, now they are facing a difficult winter with high prices ahead.

So these are all legitimate concerns for a family, right? But the fact that these legitimate grievances and concerns are being placed in a manipulated context and environment, this is something that we understood and we realized that it's also the context that has to be explained to people, not just why, you know, the price is now, you know, higher or why a certain institution had to decide to increase the price, but the context against which this is happening.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Liliana. Natalia, you are looking from a European perspective on the topic of democratic resilience. You know the Moldovan case, you know the Georgian case, and in general, this region very well. And you are also an expert on behavioral science. So, how would you say can help us a better understanding of behaviors to make our democracies more stronger or more resilient? And how is, how would you estimate and evaluate the Moldovan case in that?

[Natalia Vutova] Thank you very much, Brigita. Well, I will start from the very beginning. Behavioral science is about putting the individuals, the citizens, at the core of policy making, of laws, of how policies are designed, how issues are addressed. And when it comes to, as we call it, democratic backsliding, in certain cases we are already at the stage of democratic freefall, unfortunately, in some part of the world.

The question is how you re-engage with the citizens. And if you come to think, actually, up until the 20th century, the individuals, citizens, people were not at the center of interest of power. It is actually started in the 20th century. It evolved with the development of human rights after the Second World War, and this is where my organization, the Council of Europe, plays a very important role when it comes to the development of human rights.

But my, my thesis, my kind of what I argue is that you cannot go on and contribute to the development of human rights, ensuring that people are there in the minds of the policy makers, of the politicians, without these behavioral insights, without this behavioral science perspective. I looked at the survey, which is a very impressive survey, and you can find that 71.5% of the citizens of Republic Moldova consider that they should be consulted more, especially on important decisions.

And again, this is about behavioral science. It is about finding what, on the one hand, what people think, how they see the problem, and also what are the solutions that they came up with. I'm not promoting a la-la land, and I know that we live in a real world, but the fact that politicians, policy makers know what actually people think and how they see the solution to their problems would be very, very helpful.

We at the Council of Europe, we promote rule of law, democracy, and human rights. And I really believe that if you, for instance, you put in place a project or a policy or you work on a legislation, let's say on children's-friend, child-friendly justice, the best actually expert that you get is not a judge, is not a prosecutor, is not even a police officer, but the best specialist on that, the most insightful is probably the single mother who is doing everything possible not to have her child end up in the criminal world.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you, Natalia. You both mentioned several times trust, and I would like to speak with you about this term, also on the basis of this poll we have done with our partners ahead of the Security Forum, so you can also find the results online. Because in this survey, in this poll, the trust of the Moldovans are not very high when it comes to political institutions here or democratic institutions in Chisinau.

But the trust is pretty okay, much higher with local institutions: fire service, emergency, church, local council. Sergius, why is it so important for us to discuss the term of trust in a democracy? And what does it mean? I know you have a lot of experience in that. To whom a citizen in a democracy should trust?

And what could be the bad consequences if the trust is very, very low? Or even how can we work with low-trusted societies? The Moldovan society might be an example. So, please help us with these insights.

[Sergius] Yes, so good day, everybody. Absolutely great to be at this forum and thank you so much for this invitation. I think that the conversation about trust is key because it is the amplifier, the sort of magical potion of democratic change. And I think a lot of times it is misconstrued, as in we understand the relationship of what we do with trust, I think, in a slightly faulty manner. Just to give you an example.

A lot of times we focus on citizen engagement, trust, transparency, trust. And I've seen it time and again when people would come out and say, well, we need to publish more, we need to have more transparency and therefore we'll have trust. And actually, I would beg to differ. I think that transparency can very much generate less trust if it is something which is a box ticking of an exercise, something which is just forced down and really does not translate into any meaningful action.

Because at the end of the day, trust is this comfortable relationship with the unknown. Just think of it in your private life, you base a lot of things on trust, right? And if you want to create trust, you need much more than just transparency. You need empathy, so you need to be able to listen. You need to be professional in what you do. You need to be reliable. You actually need to deliver.

And then it goes to the conversation of, well, how well do we perform, right? And how do we actually create this experience for citizens so that they see that the state really cares? And how do you create this experience so that citizens really feel that they are the owners of the state? And this is where I think behavioral insights come in, because a lot of things that we've been doing, they're very much about this legalistic, political science-driven approach, which is very important.

I come from the country which is an overachiever in many ways. I'm from Lithuania. And I remember the conversations that we had 25, 30 years ago, and we really truly believed that strong institutions and good laws would create all the difference we need. And we've progressed immensely. However, if you look at the normative side, right, values and behaviors, we still also have some homework to do.

I've spent many years with Transparency International, so an anti-corruption example. We've been absolutely successful when it comes to petty corruption in Lithuania. Very few people bribe. So if you were to ask people whether they gave a bribe, very few people would say that they did. And actually, we see that this is indeed the case. But normatively, if you were to ask people would they be prepared to give a bribe?

Well, what you think people would answer? Three-fourths would still be prepared to give a bribe. Three-fourths still think that it could help, which is not a failure, but it is an indication that there's still work to be done because that is the actual indicator of the level of trust that they have to healthcare institutions. And this is the conversation that needs to be had because if you stop just there and say, "Well, look, everything is all right," well, what is the residual effect of what you did?

How much will stay if you don't continue? And I would very much be keen to discuss this with you.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Sergius, and thank you very much for these insights also about your society because, of course, they are always the front-runner, they are the performers, the perfect performers, but when it comes to norms and values, it's a long one, it's a marathon. Michal, you are coming from Brussels, so you overlook the situation in the European Union, in the membership states when it comes to how much citizens trust their societies. And you also have seen our data about Moldova. In what context do you place these findings, also compared to other European countries?

[Michal Krafcik] Does it work? No, it doesn't. Many thanks for this question and many thanks for having me. I'd like to start, if you allow, with a small but important methodological remark. The study that you're mentioning was administered as face-to-face interviews at people's homes, which is fantastic from the viewpoint of keeping people focused on the questions and so on, but is poses certain risks, and notably the risk of social desirability bias is substantial.

Let me just give you an example. 80% of respondents said they participated in the last local elections. Do you remember what the true number is? It's 42. So, like half of these people, well, misspoke or embellished the reality slightly. And this is something that we observe in many, notably post-communist countries in which there is this hard experience that when you're talking to public officials, and the interviewer may be perceived as such, then you don't tell the truth, you tell what you think they want to hear.

So, so this is interesting per se as a kind of indirect sign of low trust as well, which we also see directly, as you mentioned. That's like one way in which the data from this survey, but also from the Eurobarometers, differs substantially between, say, the EU 27 average and Moldova. Maybe not for fire brigades, everybody trusts fire brigades, you have no choice, I suppose.

So when there is this Inglehart-Welzel framework in which there is a dimension of survival versus self-experience, and Moldova is like at the very, very left end, so like a zombie apocalypse type of survival, which comes with low trust. So in this sense, this is not super surprising. But this consideration also helps us to understand some other important differences that we see between the responses that people in Moldova give to what what you see in most European countries.

For example, in the question, how often do you see misinformation? As many as 40% say they see it daily. And in the Eurobarometer, we'll also see that it's much, much, much higher fraction of people say they see misinformation very often, despite what you said that often it's not just fakes that the Russian propaganda produces these days. So, you know, it could be partly, you know, we know that there has been interference in the elections, for example, so it could be a perception of reality to some extent, but it could be also that because of their low trust, they suspect misinformation even if something is not the case of misinformation.

And possibly also the social desirability bias I mentioned, because we all know that disinformation is a major problem, so when you're asked, do you see it, I say, yes, I see this major, major problem. So, you know, I would love to ask them, give me a specific example of misinformation that you saw last month, that would shed much more light on this issue.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Michal, and also for the recommendation when it comes on to the question how we ask people, and a good example that behavior insights are very important also for our practical work and also for collecting the data. You know, in this survey, you can also see, and you mentioned it, that a lot of Moldovans think that they are facing disinformation on a daily basis and that also the trust in media is very, very low.

Rufin, you have a lot of experience in Moldova, but also in Romania working with media. Can you help us? Why trust in every channel, public media, social media is so low? And what is the role of media in a society like the Moldovan we can consider as a low-trust society?

[Rufin Zamfir] Well, thank you, thank you so much for this truly important question. And I would have loved to have a complete answer to it, but I'm afraid I'm in sort of an impossibility to give you a complete one. Let me just start with the second part of your question and let me first refer to what media should do, not why the people are, you know, trusting different other channels more than they trust independent media.

And the Republic of Moldova, even though, of course, the numbers might not be exactly the ones that we would have loved to see, but the Republic of Moldova started a process of regaining trust when it comes to independent media. And this process started with something that I think is truly important and needs to be remembered in at least in this room and in our expertise bubble.

The very fact that they started with is understanding communities, understanding how exactly people do consume information. Because, and somehow it taps into what Liliana mentioned at the very beginning of this panel, in a society, you need to be able to speak everyone's language.

You need to have state institutions conveying an official message, but then you need to have independent media, civil society able to translate the parlance, the vocabulary that the official institutions are using, translate this into something that people do understand. And what is happening as we speak in the Republic of Moldova is again this process of regaining trust by the independent media of people in every layers of the society.

Another very important thing that happened was, you know, realizing and actually investing effort into reversing something that was completely detrimental for the Moldovan society when it comes to information circulation, let's put it this way. And what happened, and this is again, not just something that took place in the independent media, but state institutions as well, they realized the value of having a multicultural, multilingual society.

And conveying the message, again, not just in that specific vocabulary that a certain part of the audience might understand better, but also conveying the message in the language that that part of the society understands it better. Again, the process is not by far complete and it's not by far functioning in the ideal mode, but it's a start that the Republic of Moldova started a couple of years, probably even a bit more than just a couple of years ago.

Then, referring to the first part of your question, why do people tend not to trust institutions? And why do people, and it's not, by the way, it's not just something that we see in the Republic of Moldova, we see it in Romania, we see it in the whole region and why not, we see it elsewhere in the world. Well, there are a number of factors, and among these factors, perhaps the most important one is that the people, the Moldovans, the usual individuals in the society tend to put their trust where their values are identified.

So, I trust more a family member or I trust more a friend, and this is where the propagandists and those bombarding the people with disinformation campaigns are tapping into. They know this, they understand it, and they're replicating, you know, they're mimicking the way this trustful person looks like. How? Just to give you an example, they're creating social media groups that are pretending to share values that are dear to individuals in a society.

And perhaps most of the time they're do post messages that are aligned with these values, but sometimes, and this sometimes is coming exactly at the right moment for the propagandist, sometimes they're just injecting disinformation or manipulation of information. This is what this whole-of-society mechanism that was mentioned, this is the enemy with which this whole-of-society mechanism is fighting with. Again, it's a road that just started, but it's something that already generated a number of lessons learned that are truly important to be exported elsewhere.

[Brigita Tribel] And the two most important lessons learned from this process, what do you think, Rufin?

[Rufin Zamfir] Well, the first one, perhaps I will, I will add a bit more on something that I already mentioned. The ability to speak the language of the people, the ability to understand that irrespective of ethnic background or irrespective of the language somebody is using the most, at the end of the day, everybody in a society shares common values with the others, I don't know, security, peace, economic development. This is something that all the members in a society are holding dear.

And you're communicating along these values. You're not just, you're not a propagandist. You, independent media or public institutions, you're not in the business of, you know, throwing words to the society. You're there to protect them. You're there, first and foremost, to protect democracy and you're there to protect or safeguard democratic institutions.

You're there not to convince them to do whatever you might, I don't know, you might imagine them doing, but you're there to make sure that all the individuals have all the information that they need, and that information is the truthful one, so that they can make an informal, an informal decision that stays on, again, on truth.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much for this perfect bridge to Liliana. Liliana, as the director of the Stratcom Center here in the Republic of Moldova, how do you read these numbers from our poll? And also, how do you see what our colleagues mentioned and add to this discussion when it comes to trust in the Moldovan society?

[Liliana Vizu] Well, before I get to that, since we are speaking about behavioral insights, I just want to share how important this behavioral science is also for an institution like Stratcom because for us, it first of all, it maps the vulnerabilities. So based on this, we can see what are the vulnerabilities of our society that the aggressor and the enemy will exploit and will use to attack us and to also assess what concerns of people were overlooked, because based on this, we can make recommendations for various institutions, you know, that they should either change or start addressing more or and engage more because trust and it's absolutely as Sergius said, it's also about delivering.

It's not just about talking. We heard in the previous panel that it's about talking to people, explaining, but I think it's more, I mean, you'll be more convincing once you start delivering on your promises, be it electoral promises or some other type of promises, right? So this is one, one way for us to support and to help public institutions and authorities to become more trustworthy by informing how they should explain better, that they shouldn't overlook something, but ideally, you know, that they should deliver on that.

Now, we have developed at the center based on our own methodology what we call the National Information Resilience Index. And this is a tool that not only shows us again, the vulnerable spots, it's, it serves as a measurement to see, to assess to what extent people were affected by the FEMI and to what extent they are responding, and basically we are assessing how resilient they are. And since who was it since you mentioned about the petty corruption, yes, and how ready people were to, I mean, pay or not pay a bribe, we are also measuring things like are you ready to, I mean, we by measuring or addressing a question, are you ready to what extent are you ready to pay taxes to be a disciplined citizen?

We assess the extent to which a person wants to be loyal to the state, wants to contribute to the state, and believes not only in that particular, I don't know, fiscal authority, but also, you know, in the, in the built up of the democratic state. So we are also looking at indicators or questions like, do you believe in good governance, for example? Do you think that the previous elections were free and fair? To what extent do you think they were free and fair?

Do you believe you are in a capacity to influence decisions, right? Because if you are not, don't believe you have a capacity, then you will not be so active, you will not take active part in public consultations, you will not see fit for you to take part, take, you know, active, you know, part in the voting in the next campaigns. And this is precisely what the enemy does. I mean, once it profiled you as somebody who has some level of critical thinking, it wants you to stay at home, right?

It doesn't want you being having a certain decent mind to be there and vote. Or we also look at indicators how proud of you to be a Moldovan citizen, right? Because based on this, we can assess the degree of, belonging, the feeling of belonging to the community, to the country. We also try to see, you know, are you more loyal to your community versus, you know, the region versus, or ideally it shouldn't be versus the country or sometimes we even look at loyalties because one figure that still puzzles me in your survey, Brigita, or the one that you just mentioned, is how people think that, you know, Russian Federation and Putin would be the second or the third most trusted partner in case something wrong happens to Moldova. So behavioral science is absolutely an insight. This should be again, besides informing our work and serving as a guide, it also serves as, you know, it's how we assess our own efficiency as Stratcom. And I have to be honest, I think that Stratcom as an institution also has to gain trust, you know?

We also have to explain people, you know, that besides exposing certain inauthentic behaviors or certain inauthentic, no, inauthentic behavior or, how to say, the, the foreign interference based on inauthentic behavior, we have to also explain where we got that evidence, right? People have to know how did we come to this conclusion, you know? They have to trust that we have sound judgment and understanding of where things stand. And then of course, all this has to be embedded in our mandate.

So people have to understand, you know, that whatever Stratcom does or institutions like Stratcom, the, we had previously here the head of the Information and Security Service. So they have to know that this is takes place within a framework. This framework starts with the National Security Strategy. This framework for Stratcom is the concept on strategic communication against FEMI and disinformation and countering disinformation, which is approved by the Parliament.

And it says five pillars: it's European integration, social cohesion, resilience, economic resilience, defense, and security. So Stratcom doesn't monitor, you know, all the free speech there is on internet. No, Stratcom looks at inauthentic behavior, amplified, concerted, organized attack on our democracy, which, you know, touches upon one of these five pillars. We also have developed in Moldova the National Resilience, the National Democratic Resilience Program, which is approved at the level of the National Security Council.

So and Stratcom is part of this council. So there is a framework, a legal one, there is a legal mandate in which we operate, and I think, I mean, again, as a journalist at heart and somebody who also did communication, you can't never have enough of communication, right? When it comes to explain, especially so sensitive decisions, you know, as, you know, requests to take, requests to platforms to take down certain contents, right? Which can very easily be attacked as censorship or any other, you know, democratic shortcoming. And now I forgot your question, but I hope I did say something meaningful.

[Sergius] Thank you though. I nodded in response because I agree. But if I may, I'd be happy to.

[Brigita Tribel] Sure, please.

[Sergius] Because you know, I'm thinking, we're having a really interesting discussion, I hope. And to me at the end of the day, it boils down to how we define success. So really, what is success for us? Is it a lot of paperwork and a lot of laws that are compliant, or is it normative and behavioral change? And then if it's normative and behavioral change, how do we know that this change actually has taken place? And then that is the question about indicators.

Indeed, you can rely on self-reporting, but we know about the desirability bias and a whole bag of biases that kick in because everybody thinks that they're better than average, everybody wants to show, you know, there's a lot of that going on. So then, how do you design assessments so that they really help you understand what's going on on the ground and which behavioral checks you can actually put in place? And that I think goes to the conversation about the fact that a lot of times our data is very much outdated, is not a very good quality, and I think you here in Moldova with the window of opportunity, if I may say so, that you have, you can learn from our successes and failures.

And the more real-time data you have, the more adequate choices you can make. And a lot of times it's resourceful and it's costly, and that is why I think behavioral insights also offer you this path of desire. It's this architectural term, I think, which is the shortest way to the point that you want to get to. And like that's when we walk across streets and architects design pathways, but we sort of make shortcuts.

And we have a lot of data from various research that tells us how people are likely to behave. For instance, let's take this room, right? We know that this dim light probably induces creativity and creates this sense of coziness. We also know that if there's more light in rooms, that actually influences people's adherence to rules and they're actually more compliant in terms of behavior. For instance, children, youth would cheat less in more lit classrooms than in darker classrooms.

We also know from various other data and research that if you want to communicate normatively to people, it shouldn't be done in this top-down way as what you should do and what you should not do. The messaging should be as close to the point of action as possible. It should be designed and thought through with the collective and the team that actually, you know, the staff of the organization that communicates with citizens or clients. You should take into account physical, social, psychological domains, and it's all there.

And I think that it also then means that we design our interventions, right? And we design the way we approach change in a different way. For instance, we don't go for a perfect-looking law, but we try to understand what law would actually stick. For instance, in Lithuania, and another example from, you know, my country, we have the law on lobbying. And I think we've been very smart in the way we designed it because it now incentivizes both lobbyists and those that are lobbied to report.

And people would respond, well, but does it work? Have you caught a lot of people? And my answer would be that it's not about catching people, it's about creating a norm of openness that it is okay to speak about lobbying and influence openly. And that is our homework for the first five years because, you know, just five years ago, everybody would pretend that lobbying would not exist.

So do you really expect to go and catch people and demonize this whole process of business communicating with the public sector, which is part of any democratic society, or do you find ways that it gets on the open? And to me, that's one of the normative examples that I think is a good one. So I think that's where behavioral insights can be really useful, and yes, that was the idea.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Sergius. The main priority of the government here in Moldova, of the President, and the majority of Moldovans is to join the European Union as fast as possible. It's also, it's not only a very complicated technical process, it's also a change of norms, behaviors. So Natalia, we talked about that last week. What do you like to underline what we should not forget in this very, very difficult but also fast process? And not only in Moldova, I mean it's about in general this enlargement and accession process.

[Natalia Vutova] Thank you. I will actually start with something that Liliana spoke about. Liliana spoke about context. And context, if I bring it back to behavioral science, to behavioral insights, is at the core what we are doing. The context of Moldova, of Republic of Moldova, is completely different from the context, for instance, in my own country, Bulgaria, which is a member of the European Union for more, well, almost 20 years now.

So, the first thing that I would say that in this, in this process, which is very, I think that really Republic of Moldova is absolutely impressive in the way that this process is taking place on the part of the authorities with limited human capital. You are really a role model in this respect. You know very well that the window of opportunity is very, very short, is very, very small, so you just go for it.

And this is how things should be. And in that respect, again, my organization, the Council of Europe, we are doing everything possible to support you. But I'm really reassured by what you said, Liliana, and that context matters and that really trying to, to also to put in a way the citizens at the core of the process, to communicate with them, because as there is this kind of principle in law that justice should not only be done, but should be seen to be done.

So the same goes for the policies that the authorities of Republic of Moldova implement, the way that the accession process is taking place. The citizens really need to hear about it, to see it, and it's really music to my ears the fact that you want to have more of behavioral science, behavioral insights as part of your, of your work. And again, you are also impressive in the sense that the United Kingdom is the frontrunner in the world, I would say, not only in Europe, in terms of the level of, you know, like embedding behavioral insights in public policies.

For the authorities, it's a no-brainer now, you know, like behavioral insights should be there. And I see that in a small country like Republic of Moldova, you take this very, very seriously, because the communication with the, what we call strategic communication, what we also call strategic communication, to interact with the citizens is very important. Because at the end of the day, and I think this is what Sergius hinted at, you can have the perfect laws in the world, you can have all the strategies required by international organizations and by the European Union, and still the context does not allow their full implementation.

And this is also what when we talk about resilient institutions in Republic of Moldova, this is very, very important. Sergius said that behavioral insights help you, they are kind of a shortcut towards that. And I would like just to pick on what Michal said and it's really we need to to keep that in mind when we talk about surveys. Surveys are very important. They, they constitute the baseline for the authorities to know what is the, what people think, right?

There can be discrepancies in the surveys. So according to the, to the survey that we have now here, I think that, you know, like the trust of the citizens in the judicial system is about 34%. In another survey that was supported by the Council of Europe and which was published this week by the Ombudsman's office, there is a difference of about 10 or 13 percentage, you know, like there is kind of more trust in the Ombudsman's.

So, this is not about flawed surveys, but this is about perception because trust is perception. And you talked about the feeling of belonging of the citizens of Republic of Moldova, that this is an important part of your work and you are absolutely right because I think that this feeling of belonging is part of the European identity of your, your citizens. So, just to sum up on that, don't get upset or unhappy if there are differences in in surveys because, as Michal very much, very well pointed, it depends on the, on the methodology, it depends on many, many things.

It does not mean that one is wrong and the other is right. It's just a baseline, and based on that, you can work with this soft power that you have, the way that you communicate, the way that you put people in the center. And just one last point. You said that it's about the delivery. And of course, you know, the proof of the pudding is in it eating. And I think that it's very, very reassuring that the authorities of Republic of Moldova keep that at the center of their mind.

[Brigita Tribel] So, as a take-away, next year we will do a new survey so to compare the data. Rufin.

[Rufin Zamfir] No, I just wanted to add something, and it might be just me wearing this hat of strategic communication expert, but regarding with, you know, the surveys and their importance in adjusting policies or rules on optics at least on different issues, to me as a Stratcom expert, a survey, a survey is just the lightning pole. It's not the light. The survey is what I'm supporting myself with. It's not what sheds light into the, in into making, it's again, it's the pole that sustains the light, the street light, right?

It's not the light per se, the survey. The survey in itself has, of course, a value, but it's not enough to generate behavioral change in a society. Knowing the numbers is not something that will lead a certain society or a part of a society to changing their behavior. It's the way you're communicating those numbers. And then I will refer to something that was mentioned previously in this panel, I think by Natalia at the very beginning of the panel, this 70-something percent of the Moldovan society who consider themselves as not being consulted enough.

Okay, well, let's face it, all of us, elections are a mechanism in consulting the people. If 70-something percentage of the population have this feeling of not being consulted enough, how come that we end up with having just 50 and a bit percent of the population participating in elections? And this stays with the fact that we're still lagging behind in communicating the importance of the process, the importance of participating in elections.

And then what I think is truly important and it might be just a mantra for today in my, in my intervention, but it's truly important the social listening, the, the, or call it audience segmentation, call it what you will, this, the effort in understanding how people are, you know, are reading information, how they are projecting the information in their own heads. This is truly important.

And what we did for our media partners in the Republic of Moldova is exactly this sort of creating this sort of mechanism, the audience segmentation so that they can tailor-made the message to the way a certain group of population is consuming the information. And then we can hope that this discrepancies between surveys and what we see in elections, then we can hope that this discrepancies are not going to be the same 20-something percent of the population.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Rufin, for underlining that. You know, we now discovered the national context, the context of Moldova especially. I would like to go ahead to the European level. Michal, you know, the European Union is a union with a lot of nations and a lot of own communication spaces in the societies. Can you give us an overview who trusts the European Union institution, maybe who not? And also, what is the European Union and the Commission you are working for doing to keep or to build trust? And how do they think about communication with the membership societies, but also with the societies that want to join?

[Michal Krafcik] Thanks. So, I don't want to speak for the commission as a whole because I'm only a, you know, a lowly functioner. I can say a bit about what we are doing at the competence center on behavioral insights in which we run behavioral experiments that among other things, try to inform communication. So, one context in which this is done is the fight against misinformation, and we run online experiments to test different ways in which misinformation can be addressed.

And indeed, an important dimension here is the issue of trust. So this is a very important moderator. So in a, in a study that we published some time ago, we investigated to what extent the trust toward the EU is affecting effectiveness of communication. So the hypothesis was that the, say, whether a debunk of a, of a fake is to what extent this is more versus less effective depending on whether it's explicitly signed as coming from the European Commission.

And we investigated how this interacts with trust toward the, toward the commission, because the idea is that you can only more effectively communicate if the audience is receptive and trustful. In this sense, I personally believe, again, this is not like the position, official position of the commission for sure, but given the reception of some of the communication that is via X, for example, there is a serious risk that some of it may be backfiring sometimes. That's, thank you.

[Brigita Tribel] Besides trust, we speak a lot about social cohesion here in Moldova, in the European Union, and also now more and more in my country I'm coming from Germany. Liliana, when we go back to our survey, more than 80% of the Moldovans or the Moldovans who were asked think that the people in Moldova are divided. So, they think that the society is divided. And the main lines of divisions is foreign policy orientation, political preference, but that's really what they think the situation is like. So, what do you think when you or thought when you saw this data? And why?

[Liliana Vizu] Well, I think that we have a lot to do and to work. We won't get time to relax soon when you look at this data. Well, when I mentioned those five pillars, it's absolutely justified that social cohesion is number two. European integration, of course, is the most targeted process, democratic process of the Republic of Moldova because what Russia doesn't want, simply, it doesn't want us to become members of the EU, and that's why this is the most targeted one.

But the way to achieve that, it's of course to attack our society on and exploit all the divisive lines. Some of them are historic. I think the President yesterday mentioned it here in the, in the interview, in the panel with the Financial Times foreign editor, that this issue of unification, you know, it's still being exploited by politicians. Thank God, after 30 years, we more or less realize, you know, where we stand on the Romanian language, and even the pro-Russian opposition, even they themselves say that it's Romanian language.

Yes, we do have some extremist politicians that try to use the Moldovan language to keep alive this idiotic anecdote, let's put it this way, that there's a Moldovan language based on Cyrillic, whatever, Latin script. I mean, we saw even this year on the 31st of August, on the day of the language, how a marginal extremist pro-Russian opposition, and even she pretended to talk to Stefan cel Mare, who answered her back in this Moldovan whatever delusion she had at that time.

So, but after that, I mean, at least the fact, the name of the language is not, hopefully, it's not, you know, after 30 years, we managed to close the gap between those who were still saying, "No, I'm Moldovan, speaking Moldovan." We do have the Moldovan identity, largely or partially created by the Soviet Union. It was a Soviet precept and which was imposed on us as opposed to the Romanian identity. So we still have even this type of, the identity issue that prevents us to be a more united society and a stronger society.

This again, it's not something, you know, that one institution can fix it even if it wants to. This is, you know, a matter of, you know, having those dialogues in the society with historians, with the testimonials, the one we can still have, you know, in terms of, you know, was it liberation, was it occupation, the deportations, the role the Soviet Union had in destroying churches and the faith and how the faith was attacked. So we have some historic lines that the enemy is still exploiting.

But we also have a network of actors. The pro-Russian opposition, it's one. Somehow they are pro-peace, but they fail to still say who is the aggressor. Somehow the word Russia doesn't, cannot, you know, be pronounced by their tongue, but overall they claim they are for peace. We have the church that hopefully now we've seen signs that it's trying at least to have a dialogue with the other, with the, so the canonically subordinated one to the Moscow and to, I mean, Russia and Bucharest and Romania.

So hopefully there's going to be a dialogue and hopefully the church is not going to be used to attack us. But we've seen and we had investigative, independent reporting that documented how priests were being taken, were being instructed, were being instructed to become influencers, you know, so that they could flood the online space with their anti-EU, anti-LGBT, anti-anti, anti-EU values, the, the information space.

So what else? Okay, you mentioned already the geopolitical divide, which was already exploited by the, by the politicians. We do still have the, of course, the issue of Transnistria and Gagauzia, and the fact that Gagauzia in the past years was heavily weaponized again to basically not only go after, you know, attacking the central authorities, but basically being another way, another way to attack the European integration choice and the path of the Republic of Moldova.

It doesn't help that we have this regional disparities in terms of prosperity, Chisinau being, you know, completely a different situation from the regions. So we'll have to see now what goes on with this territorial administrative reform. And we also mapped and I spoke, I think also here just a month ago, why the territorial reform is being attacked, because it's a way to increase Moldova's economic resilience, it's a way to again close the gap of these regional disparities. And of course, this is what our aggressor is not interested in having, right, in so that Moldova achieves a better, you know, economic resilience and more cohesion between regions.

So I mean, I think the list is pretty large. We can still go on and on, you know, young versus old, all this, you know, that you know, you are keeping me in the past. We used to have that before. I remember how vivid were the reactions. I mean, I think we even had campaigns where the nephews from Europe were calling their grandma in the countryside and begging her, please don't keep me in your past, let me live my future. I mean, I think that again, from the empirical evidence and also from what we see, some of the gaps are closing. We are on some of issues, we are getting mature enough, but I think it's also thanks to our values, you know, I remember when I was the head of newsroom at Public Moldova 1 in 20, what was it, 2012, so it was after the communists lost power and when Moldova was just negotiating the visa-free regime, one of the conditions was to for Moldova was to adopt the law on equality.

And everything at the time, I mean, everything that law was simply said, oh, this is an LGBT law, you know? And I remember how inflated was the public discourse and even the behavior of people when we had the pride marches, pride parade. Now, 10 years after, 15 years after, the context in which they take place, it's less inflammatory. People are, you know, started to travel thanks to free regime, they've experienced the EU and they realized that all those lies about the EU, you know, where every second one is, I don't know, the rotten EU, it's not actually that rotten, but actually it's quite prosperous, you know, and, you know, you'd rather have, you know, a city break in Madeira or somewhere else, you know, in Europe rather than, you know, Sochi or some other destination. So, empirically speaking, the gaps are closing. Some of them take times because the wounds are deeper. And it's our again, task to simply, you know, continue addressing them and speaking about them, no matter how painful they are.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you. Sergius, from your point of view and your experience from the Baltic states, how do we work with these divisions? So, when it comes to social cohesion and these conflicts like Liliana talked about.

[Sergius] Yes, so I think this is a key question and I think we start by acknowledging that these divisions exist. Because it is very easy, if you are in the capital, to assume that you are right, everybody else is wrong, and that is the matter of truth and that's the end of the conversation. Because the matter of fact is that polarization in the region is growing. So surely, we're not doing something right.

And I think one of the issues that we do need to address is that this copy-paste mentality that we have had for so many years and have enjoyed some success with is probably in need of revision as well because we are in this region societies of relatively low trust. And I think we are guilty, well, guilty maybe is a strong word, but we have not considered what it means to take on a lot of different new instruments, a lot of different institutions and institutional arrangements that originated in societies of high trust.

And what should we do to actually contextualize it? Because context is king or queen for that matter. And I think then that is the key question to address: how do you actually bridge the gap? And I think it starts from within institutions because institutions that are polarized would probably have a very difficult time unifying society. So that is one step. But if we speak about the broader public, I do see quite a lot of evidence that these meaningful, empowering experiences really do create a bond because we now see from various data, and that's the challenge that a lot of my colleagues in media face, because there's this demand for attention, right?

It has to be provocative. It's not enough, right? People might read the news, but then they find the news that they like and that confirm their views. So meaningful experiences that bridge people from different groups and let them experience each other's point of view is key. And of course, then you have direct, participatory, deliberate formats, and I think that this is also what we need to revise because a lot of these formats are quite costly, whether it's participatory budgeting, school participatory budgeting, citizen assemblies, legislative theater, a lot of different behavioral instruments that you can use, because there's just so much you can do.

And I'm happy to see that the consensus in the field, it seems to me now, is that we need to be looking for this minimal viable democratic experience that can be scaled up. And this notion that you need to scale down in order to scale up is new, I think, because we realize that we have just so little time. I mean, there's not much time to change, right? The brevity of time is clear, and we need to reassess a lot of approaches that we have had before. And I think in this way, you can speak about lessening polarization, creating greater social cohesion, which people then can rely on in terms of experience.

So that when they read a piece of propaganda coming their way, they will not only be able to say that they think they can identify it, because I saw the results of the survey and I'm not surprised that the more empowered ones think that they can do certain things better than others, but they actually know that this is not true because also we have a lot of psychographic data. We know that those that are empowered, that understand their rights, know how to communicate with state representatives, usually get things in a lawful manner, are much more satisfied with the outcome, and a lot of times are the ones that you need to be aware of because they're the first to show up. And what we want is to have as many people showing up as possible. So I would say maybe that is the road to consider.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much, Sergius. The role of an educated society for democracy and also has Moldova prioritized these things. Sergius?

[Sergius] Yes, and I'm happy to share the floor. I think this is key. The question is what we mean by educated society, and I'm sure that Moldovans are quite educated. And if we are speaking about democratic education, then how do we operationalize it? And I think the key here is to start as early on as you possibly can. And this is where I think what we've just discussed is essential because I think that this ecosystem thinking, right, when you understand that it's not just international organizations, it's not just donors, it's not just the Ministry of Defense, right, in this particular form, but it's a broader group of actors that should have a conversation as to why do we do what we do and how do we make it in a sustainable way.

So democratic education is one of the key tenets there, and that is what I think can be achieved with say school participatory budgeting, other many publics, which I hope can be streamlined in school curricula with the help of the Ministry of Education, municipalities, municipal educational agencies. And I think that these are the conversations that need to happen as soon as they possibly can in fora formats with guidelines and clear understanding that it's not projects and it's not just one-off initiatives, but this is something which should run for 5, 10 years because what we see from behavioral data is that for normative change to take place, you need about four, five years for one particular community, one particular school to implement that.

And that is also where trust matters because we see that in those schools and educational establishments where trust exists, again, it's this magical source because all of a sudden, students are much more engaged, teachers believe in this much more. And I would define democratic education as such.

[Liliana Vizu] Very quickly just to add to the Moldova-Lithuania connection and to the question of education and whether we have prioritized. So this year at the beginning of the academic year, we launched a guide for teachers. It's called National Values for Education, which was done actually, it was inspired by the Lithuanian example and we looked at how it was developed in Lithuania and we then had our own exchanges with our Lithuanian partners. And it's a guide that goes runs through the junior, so through all the stages of education.

And not only education, but I would add culture, because we are also now trying to engage with the Ministry of Culture to look at, for example, how can the infrastructure of cultural houses, because we do have have those cultural houses literally in every village, how can we turn it from a building to a social cohesion point where people meet, when we get people out of offline, we move them back in, you know, from online, we move them back in offline where they could simply sit, I don't know, discuss, let them discuss, you know, complicated issues, easy, tell jokes, sing, but have a proper and genuine interaction. So not only education, but culture and some other as well.

And on communication on drones and I think yeah, besides telling the truth, be as precise as possible, give the context. And we actually have been doing this with Stratcom with Ministry of Defense. I think you also yesterday in the, like in the first keynote speeches, there was a lot about discussed about drones. So yes, not hide things, but prepare and increase the awareness of population on this drone incidence and of course explain that the context that this is a deliberate escalation that targets to lower the support of the population for Ukraine, the support for defending our, investing in our defense capabilities, and overall to create this dissatisfaction and basically blame it all on the EU.

[Audience Member] Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this panel. It's really lovely to have a real debate on public opinion and behavioral science, so thank you once more. I'm Tatiana Cojocari, I'm an independent researcher working on public opinion and foreign policy issue. And I have a short comment and then a question for you all. So my comment is related to what Michal said about biases. Yeah, we all know that like our surveys have biases, and I really think that one key point is that national experts analyze and design national polls because then you know how to address and control different biases.

And regarding the turnout, the official number versus what people are reporting, there must be also taken into account that our national register of voters not be adjusted to the realities, so because of migration and other factors. So that's why what people are reporting is not correlated with the official number because there is a different thing. So this is my comment. And my question is related to the whole of society approach because we understand that this is a key approach when fighting hybrid warfare and cognitive resilience and strengthening cognitive resilience of the society.

And however, one of the role of civil society is also to monitor the integrity of public institution and then report irregularities or something that is not working well. And my question to you is, do you see any short or long-term risk related to or associated with whole-of-society approach? And what lessons might Moldova offer regarding this whole-of-society approach and the risks associated with it? Thank you so much.

[Natalia Vutova] No, I have never said that CSOs, NGOs should not criticize the authorities. I said that the primary role of the non-governmental sector is to contribute to the social cohesion of the society and to have it as a way, to be a way, to be an instrument, to be a vessel for the engagement of citizens in whatever form they would like for the expression of their interests, their opinions, etc. This is what I said.

[Audience Member] Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. My question is pretty much connected to the question of education of citizens. So we know there is that cognitive bias that we are like the smartest people, we know the best and we can understand and find misinformation and disinformation when we see it. So how can state, NGOs, initiative groups motivate the citizens to get that education, even if it would be provided, education on countering disinformation and things like that? Thank you very much.

[Michal Krafcik] A separate panel would indeed be good. Well, there are a lot of innovative approaches to this. There are like serious games in which people have this kind of immersive experience of participating in an informational war that help people recognize the features of misinformation and help people appreciate that it's very hard to tell whether something is fake or not. It's a big topic and a lot is being done.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you very much. I would like to ask Liliana and all the other speakers for one last word. What is, what do you think we should focus in the next months, in the next one to two years in the work on Stratcom, investing in trust and social cohesion? Really only one, two words. Liliana, what is your priority?

[Liliana Vizu] Well, I have attended this week three forums and I think I'm going to attend overall 20 forums this month. And I would love for these forums to take place in online because the attack on Moldova and the cognitive war takes place in online and we are not there yet.

[Sergius] Yes, so for me, I really hope that we can continue a conversation about success being this normative and behavioral change that can only be possible if you're okay with failing and learning from your mistakes. And my only wish would be that you learn from new mistakes that nobody else has made as opposed to repeating the mistakes of others. So that is my wish for the day. Thank you.

[Natalia Vutova] Two words: context and citizens matter.

[Michal Krafcik] I would like to see a closer collaboration between authorities and academia to so that they run together field experiments and pilot studies that would investigate in vivo various ways in which communication could be improved.

[Rufin Zamfir] Well, what I think we should do more is listening more. The next stage that we're entering is the one in which we should listen. We as experts, we as authorities, we as academia, all of us.

Welcome back to our final session of this forum. We're coming indeed to the end of this two-day journey, to the end of this security week that Chisinau hosted. To close Moldova Security Forum, I'm honored to invite our closing speakers. State Secretary Valeriu Mija, please.

[Valeriu Mija] Excellency, honorable audience, dear Director Brigita, dear Director Agne, dear Director Julian. As we came to the conclusion of the third edition of Moldova Security Forum, one of the national brands of Moldova, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vice Prime Ministry Mihai Popșoi, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to forum organizers, to all distinguished speakers, to participants, to national and international experts, representative of civil society, academics and media, as well as our partners for their valuable contribution and engagement throughout these discussions.

We are particularly glad that this year forum has reaffirmed that security is vital for all of us. The recent years' experience has demonstrated that democratic resilience must be strengthened continuously. In other words, democracy and freedom must be protected and defended if it requires. Furthermore, democracy must cooperate closer. We have also seen how security development in Ukraine have direct consequence for Moldova's security and Black Sea security.

In another word, the security challenges generated by the war in Ukraine do not stop at national borders. At the same time, we discussed that fighting hybrid threats requires continuous unity and close cooperation among all of us. No institution, no country can address these challenges alone. Moldova's strategic goal remains to further deepen cooperation with our European and transatlantic partners, grounded in our shared principle of democracy, shared values and mutual respect.

Moldova is firmly committed to its European Union integration path, which reflects the will of our citizens and our determination to continue to be a stronger, more secure and united Europe. As the European Union continues to strengthen its security preparedness and Moldova advances its accession process, we are determined to further develop our national capacity and institution, because investing in Moldova is investment in security of Europe.

We are glad that this year forum has became available and trusted platform for open dialogue, partnership and strategic reflections of the security challenges facing Moldova, Black Sea region and Europe. As we all will continue facing increasingly complex and evaluating challenges, the Moldova Security Forum will play an important role in assisting to shape collective view on approach to democratic resilience and regional security.

We are particularly proud that forum has been fostering a culture of strategic dialogue, a security and defense culture and importantly, a culture of practical cooperation among all of us, contributing to more resilient civil society, to stronger institution and to more secure and united Europe. Finally, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to the organizer and partners of this forum to the third editions and particularly to office of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation, Danke, NATO Liaison Office in Moldova, thank you, and Institute for European Policy and Reforms, mulțumesc.

And all other partners and media stakeholders who contributed to make this forum a success. We also express gratitude to MFA representative who were part of joint administration team forum and particularly to Luminița Miron, Andreea and Vadim. Thank you for your all participation, your ideas and your continued commitment to strengthening democratic resilience, promoting peace and security in Moldova and our region across Europe. Government of Moldova stands for continuing this wonderful tradition of Moldova and we are looking forward for the next edition. Stronger together. Thank you.

[Brigita Tribel] Thank you. Dr. Brigita Tribel, the director of KAS Moldova, please.

Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends. As we conclude the Moldova Security Forum 2026, let me thank you all for coming here for these two days to Chisinau, for all our speakers, for all our partners and participants, for the thoughtful and forward-looking discussions. I would like to thank especially our very close partners and friends, the NATO Liaison Office, Ipre, Julian and your team, the MFA, the MOD, and also I would like to say thank you to my team, to Sanda, doing all this work ahead and afterwards and during the days.

Please let me quote the person, the politician after our foundation is named. Peace and freedom, freedom are not everything, but without peace and freedom, everything is nothing. These words remind us that peace must never be taken for granted and freedom must never be left undefended. Our task, also after this amazing forum, is clear. We need to turn our great dialogue into concrete cooperation, and we are doing it, and we have to intensify it.

We need to show results that we are stronger together and that we can hold this peace and this freedom in our Europe. So let us leave Chisinau not only with insights, but also with a new sense of responsibility and determination to act together. I wish you all a great journey back, all the best for your upcoming projects and cooperation with our Moldovan friends, and thank you very much. And see you next year.

[Moderator] Now I invite the director of the NATO Liaison Office in Chisinau, Agne.

[Agne Lievinkaitė] Good afternoon, everyone. I believe that after Secretary of State Mija and Brigita, I have not much else what to say for closing this wonderful, wonderful event. But just maybe I will few points from from NATO's side here that, as I started the opening remarks saying that security is not a matter of chance and neither was this fantastic third forum this year.

During the last two days, we counted again, 700 people, an absolute record for the Moldova Security Forum, chose to be here in Chisinau and several hundred joined us online. And what we share now is a clear understanding of the challenges and threats we are facing and we and the will to respond to them. Our conversations have confirmed that the security challenges facing Moldova, the Black Sea region and Europe and wider are increasingly interconnected and the developments in one part of our continent affect us all.

A conflict in one region affects energy security, food, and environmental security in another. We also heard important reflections on the impact and lessons of Russia's war against Ukraine, which continues to reshape the European security landscape. And the discussions reinforced the importance of long-term support for Ukraine, continued vigilance against hybrid threats, and sustained investment in our defense. Throughout two days of discussions, we heard a consistent message: resilience is no longer a secondary consideration, it is a fundamental pillar of security.

This forum has generated powerful ideas and actionable outcomes that will help Moldova and its people continue paving the way towards a stronger, more resilient, and more secure country. A strong Moldova contributes directly to the security of the region and all Europe and much beyond. Let us continue working together to strengthen resilience, safeguard our democratic institutions, and contribute to a more secure and stable future for Moldova and the wider Euro-Atlantic community. The recurring, recurring theme throughout the forum was that partnerships matter.

This is certainly true for NATO's partnership with Moldova. Ladies and gentlemen, just allow me to sincerely thank everyone for being part of this important initiative. And my heartfelt appreciation also goes to our excellent moderators and panelists, to our co-organizing partners and friends, to also our institutional partners, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense.

And finally, last but not least, I would also like to mention and sincere thank media representatives covering this event. Security would not exist without public understanding and support, and everything media is doing is vital to protecting Moldova's democratic path. As it is, as it was just repeated by our friends, we are stronger together. So see you as well at as well at MSF 2027. Thank you.

[Moderator] Thank you, dear colleagues, dear partners, the organizers. Much has been said. These two days now come to an end. We will not let whatever has been said in this hall here. We'll carry on the discussions, the findings, the takeaways, and transform them into our policies, recommendations. In the next few weeks, we will follow up with the summary of this edition of Moldova Security Forum. So, you'll hear from us.

But none of this was possible without a lot of people and partners that have not been seen by you. Many of them have been already mentioned, of course. I'll start just to reiterate the great coordination effort we have done in our organizing team with colleagues from KAS, NATO Liaison Office, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But also I want to thank our strategic partners with whom we have developed the program.

We worked together on the program, New Strategy Center from Bucharest, Aspen Institute, GMF, ECFR, PISA, the Center for the National Center for Crisis Management. Of course, our supporting partners who contributed and helped us to organize the event, the Soros Foundation Moldova. In particular, I'd like to also thank the EU Partnership Mission that's already in the third year in a row with us and helping us.

I see some ambassadors here with us. I'd like to thank the Embassy of Netherlands, Embassy of Poland, Embassy of Sweden, Embassy of France, who also have their own contribution and we really much appreciate it. This year, we also extended the partnership and we had on board the business even more present. We appreciate the partnership with the American Chamber of Commerce here in Moldova, but also for the first time, we got on board the private sector and the private investors, and we have two companies in particular being present and contributing to the forum, Interactive Software from Romania and Quantum Systems from Germany.

So, there are many, many, many other partners that have been here with us and working. Of course, the media partners who have been translating the discussions here. You have seen our media partners team in the hall taking interviews. Thank you all for for giving your time, sharing your impressions with them as well. I also want to thank our interpreters who have been over the last two days with us and translated all the discussions and ideas we've thought here.

Our technical operators, the team, sound, the screen who organized the screen, the sound, and everything. And if you've seen, we tried to do the best we can, and thank you very much for making this possible. Of course, our comms team, a very important effort, our photographers who have helped us to send the sense, the feelings, the pictures from this event online and beyond. Together with colleagues from UNDE who have set up all this, all this arrangement and Prive for for all the, all the support. Thank you all.

Also, I want to thank my team, Ipre, some of them are here, Daniel, Victoria, Mihai, Simeon, Diana. Thank you for your contribution that is very important to me, to us, and to all of our partners. And finally, let me thank also our hosts, our host, this Palace of Republic, the main venue of events, and we're very happy that we have been hosted here by them. Not least, we have benefited from important contribution from the State Protection and Guard Service, the police, and carabinieri who made this event possible and to take place in the way that we can share our ideas, promote the message, and ensure that Chisinau indeed is becoming a strong actor in putting the discussion of security and defense on the map of Europe.

So thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you the participants, of course, the speakers and moderators, participants who have traveled from around the world. Thank you for being with us and have a nice journey back. But before we close, I want to call everyone here on the stage, our partners, our organizers, our volunteers. Thank you very much for being and helping us. Media partners, all of you, please join on the stage so that you can see the team who has been behind this effort. Thank you very much.

Please, our strategic partners, volunteers, UNDE, Prive, media partners, all of you, please join here on the stage.

Volunteers, please join us on the stage.

So this is almost the entire team. Many of colleagues were not able to stay until the end, but anyways, I think it also shows the effort behind, and I think it is very important and we're looking forward to seeing you next year at Moldova Security Forum in 2027. But for now, thank you.