The Foreign Policy Committee will present a proposal to the plenary session of parliament to denounce the Agreement on Interlibrary Loans within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The agreement governs the physical exchange of publications between the collections of the national libraries of CIS member states. The proposal to denounce the agreement was submitted by the Ministry of Culture, which asserts that most exchanges and mechanisms for library cooperation currently take place in digital format, while the system provided for by the agreement entails high costs for the international shipment of physical publications.
The National Library of the Republic of Moldova will be able to continue international cooperation, including with libraries in CIS member states, through international professional networks such as IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) and EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information, and Documentation Associations).
In this context, maintaining the mechanisms established within the CIS is no longer considered necessary, especially given the geopolitical developments in the region and the reorientation of the Republic of Moldova’s foreign policy priorities.
The agreement was signed in 1999 in Rostov and is accompanied by an additional protocol, which has also been proposed for denunciation. This initiative is part of the process of reviewing treaties concluded within the CIS framework and part of efforts to align national policy with European Union standards.
Incidentally, there is no single intergovernmental “Agreement on Interlibrary Cooperation” between Moldova and the EU. Library exchanges are facilitated through participation in international library networks and European grant projects. If your goal is to request a specific book or document from a European collection, this is done directly through the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. In Moldova, the A. Lupanu Central Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences serves as the coordinator for interlibrary requests, including international ones.
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