War and EU integration test Moldova customs resilience, agency chief says
Moldova's Customs Service marked its 35th anniversary on Thursday as regional spillover from the war in Ukraine and accelerated EU accession drive sweeping border reforms, agency director Radu Vrabie said.
Speaking on public broadcaster Moldova 1's morning show 'Bună dimineața,' Vrabie highlighted the agency's vital fiscal role, noting that customs revenues generated 57.5% of Moldova's national budget receipts in 2025. He stressed that balancing trade facilitation with border security remains the daily priority.
“We have a dual mission: to maintain the balance between trade facilitation and exports, and protecting the country’s economic interests,” Vrabie said. “Our daily work is to prevent export bottlenecks while keeping non-compliant goods out of the country amid severe external shocks.”
War shocks and cross-border rerouting
The agency faced its sharpest operational test in 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended trade flows overnight and redirected major freight volumes to Moldova's western border with Romania. Digitalized advance filings and streamlined processing have since eliminated multi-day truck queues despite higher cargo volumes.
Vrabie warned that ongoing Russian air strikes on Ukrainian border infrastructure, including the Orlivka ferry terminal near the Moldovan border, continue to threaten cargo diversions.
“Many Ukrainian border posts have been bombed recently, some just 300 meters from our crossing points,” Vrabie said. “The expertise we built over the years enables us to handle sudden traffic shifts smoothly.”
Tackling smuggling and corruption
On contraband and integrity, the director emphasized prevention and inter-agency cooperation as seizures of illicit narcotics and tobacco products climb. He urged businesses and citizens to report extortion through dedicated hotlines to dismantle corruption networks collectively.
“Our goal is corruption prevention rather than merely acting post-factum,” Vrabie said. “If citizens or business operators face bribe demands, they must use every channel available, including hotlines, to report them. It is a collective effort.”
EU accession milestones and border security
Looking ahead, Vrabie identified joint security along the 1,222-kilometer border with Ukraine and full compliance with EU accession benchmarks as top priorities for 2026. The agency has reported zero delays in meeting European Commission screening criteria while digitizing operational systems.
According to Vrabie, the Moldovan-Ukrainian frontier is the second longest between two European states after the Russian-Finnish border. To manage this expanse, border inspectors rely on integrated risk algorithms, using physical interventions only when suspicious or atypical behavior is flagged during automated screening.
“We do not carry out checks simply for the sake of checking; an algorithm runs behind the scenes,” Vrabie said. “The final filter is the customs inspector on the ground, who steps in whenever anomalous behavior is identified.”
Translation by Iurie Tataru
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