Blog post December 23, 2020 On December 17, German Marshall Fund Senior Fellow and Director of Democracy Initiatives Jonathan Katz spoke with Moldova’s President-elect Maia Sandu for a discussion focused on her priorities as she prepared to be sworn in on December 24. These priorities include addressing the socioeconomic and health impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on Moldovans, advancing democracy, countering corruption, and renewed efforts to strengthen relations with the United States, the EU, and other international partners of Moldova. What are the challenges facing Moldovans that you want to address immediately as president of Moldova? Moldovans are facing a lot of challenges, unfortunately, and not all of them can be addressed by the president directly, but I do want to contribute and lead efforts to helping people and this is firstly related to the COVID crisis. This is about helping all Moldovan’s and the frontline health sector get through this difficult situation so that people continue to have access to needed medical and health services. And this is about getting a vaccine and support for equipment, for personal protection, because it does look that Moldovans and those addressing this challenge in Moldova will continue to face at least for another few months the current COVID situation.