Moldpres

Moldpres is Moldova’s state news agency and the publisher of Monitorul Oficial, the country’s gazette of record. It was founded on 20 June 1990 by Decision No. 122-XII of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldovan SSR, in the same act that reorganised and liquidated the Moldovan Information Agency ATEM, transferred to the Government in 1994 and converted into a public institution in 2018.

Media assets

News agency: Moldpres

Official gazette: Monitorul Oficial al Republicii Moldova, which Moldpres edits and prints

Parts I to III of Monitorul Oficial are available online in open access. Parts IV and V, along with additional download, archive and offline functionality, are paid. The complete downloadable product is offered at 245 MDL a month.

Ownership and governance

The State Chancellery, the Government’s central administrative office, is the agency’s founder. Moldpres holds the status of a public institution, acts as a legal person on a self-management basis, may conclude contracts and assume obligations in its own name, and may sue and be sued.

Under its binding statute, approved by Government Decision No. 1208/2018, Moldpres’ Council has between five and seven members. Its size and membership are established by order of the Secretary General of the Government, and it includes representatives of the State Chancellery and of the ministries responsible for finance, justice, education and culture. Moldpres employees may not be Council members.

The statute also requires the Director to be selected through a public and transparent competition, and then appointed by the Secretary General of the Government on the Council’s decision. Vitalie Hadei was selected through such a competition and took office on 1 April 2024. He remains listed as Director on the agency’s current leadership page.

The competitive appointment procedure and the bar on employee membership of the Council are genuine procedural safeguards. Neither the Council nor the appointing authority is independent of the executive: the Council is composed through the Government and the Secretary General of the Government makes the appointment.

The Council approves the budget and financial reports and organises the competition for Director.

Hadei began his career at Moldpres in autumn 2001, worked at Jurnal de Chișinău from 2005 to 2013 as reporter and then director, and founded Ziarul Național in 2013, leading it until his appointment. Viorel Buzdugan has been Deputy Director since 2 January 2020.

Source of funding and budget

The statute permits three funding sources: revenue from services, state-budget subsidies channelled through the State Chancellery, and other lawful sources.

Monitorul Oficial provides Moldpres with a legally protected service revenue stream. The published record gives a budget of MDL 19.7 million in 2020, with approximately 99 per cent of income from sales and subscriptions to the official gazette, and MDL 17.1 million in 2022. Financial flows are managed through treasury accounts at the Ministry of Finance.

Moldpres’s website contains Council decisions concerning budgets, financial performance and audits for 2020 to 2023. State Media Monitor did not locate equivalent decisions or accessible financial reports for 2024, 2025 or 2026, and several links to earlier documents were no longer functional.

Hadei described the agency in June 2026 as a successful self-management operation with European partnerships and a record volume of Monitorul Oficial editions during the European Union accession process.

Editorial independence

Journalists and media experts interviewed by State Media Monitor in April 2024 said the agency’s editorial agenda is controlled by state authorities, with little expectation of critical reporting or investigative journalism.

Two formulations of the agency’s mandate coexist. Moldpres’s current institutional description commits the agency to correct, equidistant and transparent information and pluralism of opinion. Its governing statute also assigns it to inform domestic and foreign audiences about state policy and the current activities of Moldova’s public authorities, and to supply media with information about them. The latter places official government communication within the agency’s formal mandate.

Hadei said in June 2026 that the agency’s Information and Multimedia Bureau had undergone an extensive reset over the preceding two years.

Formal legal safeguards exist. Articles 4 and 5 of Moldova’s Law No. 64/2010 on Freedom of Expression guarantee media freedom of expression and prohibit censorship. Moldpres also publishes an internal ethics and professional-conduct code.

These are relevant formal protections. They do not create an institutionally independent supervisory mechanism, and State Media Monitor identified none.

AI and digital policy

State Media Monitor could not identify a published Moldpres policy governing generative artificial intelligence, mandatory human verification, model provenance or audience disclosure, and could not establish the extent of adoption in production. State Media Monitor did not establish whether Moldova has adopted a statutory framework requiring disclosure of AI-generated content.

Classification rationale

Moldpres is classified Captured Public or State Managed/Owned Media (CaPu), revised from State-Controlled Media.

It is state-founded and state-governed. The State Chancellery is its founder. Under the governing statute, the Council is composed of between five and seven members designated through the Government, and agency employees may not serve on it. The Council approves the budget and financial reports and organises the public competition for Director. The successful candidate is appointed and dismissed by the Secretary General of the Government on the Council’s decision. The competition is a procedural safeguard, but neither the Council nor the appointing authority is independent of the executive.

It is not shown to be predominantly state-funded. The statute permits state-budget subsidies, but it also provides for service income and other lawful revenue. Historical evidence describes Monitorul Oficial sales and subscriptions as providing almost all income, while State Media Monitor could not establish a current subsidy, a breakdown by purchaser, or direct state support amounting to at least 50 per cent of the annual budget. Revenue from a legally protected official-gazette operation should not be treated automatically as direct state funding.

Its editorial independence is compromised. Interview evidence from April 2024 describes editorial control by state authorities. The statute formally assigns Moldpres to provide information about state policy and the activities of public authorities, and no independently constituted oversight body protects editorial decision-making. The general guarantees of the Law on Freedom of Expression and the agency’s internal ethics code are relevant formal protections without independent institutional enforcement.

The governance and editorial conditions of the State Media Matrix are met, while the funding condition is not established. That places Moldpres in the captured rather than the state-controlled category. State-Controlled should be restored only if current financial records demonstrate qualifying direct state support of at least 50 per cent of the annual budget.

September 2026