Print page

“It was like a marathon”: how Moldova managed both crisis response and long-term reforms

Article, 29.07.2026

Guido Beltrani started leading the Swiss Cooperation Office (SCO) in Moldova when the country was dealing with a lot of uncertainties and multiple crises at once, including the war in neighbouring Ukraine, refugees, and energy crisis. Despite the pressure, the last four years became “the most meaningful ones” in his career. 

Guido Beltrani says his mandate in Moldova became the most intense and meaningful stage of his career.
Guido Beltrani says his mandate in Moldova became the most intense and meaningful stage of his career. © Iurie Gandrabura

When Guido Beltrani first came to Moldova, he knew a little about the country's history but had never worked here before. He prepared as a diplomat would: read a book about Moldova, took an intensive Romanian course together with his wife, and tried to understand the country before making decisions about projects funded by Switzerland.

From his own experience, he knew that one cannot understand a country only from meetings in the capital. This is why, whenever possible, he left his office and visited a range of locations throughout Moldova, taking benefit of the fact that the Swiss Cooperation Programme is active in all districts of the country. When asked what he takes with him from Moldova now, at the end of his mandate, Beltrani does not start with a list of project achievements.

“From Moldova, I take with me, first of all, a lot of gratitude,” he says.

He takes memories of being welcomed in villages with bread and salt, often by children singing songs or reciting poems. Beltrani remembers his first Moldovan dance, hora, in the city of Comrat, with around a hundred people dancing in a huge circle. He takes with him the feeling that Moldova was the most intense and meaningful stage of his professional career.

Even though his first months here were daunting.

Guido Beltrani regularly goes for a jog round the Valea Morilor lake; he says his mandate in Moldova felt “like a marathon”.
Guido Beltrani regularly goes for a jog round the Valea Morilor lake; he says his mandate in Moldova felt “like a marathon”. © Iurie Gandrabura

War was in every conversation

“The war in Ukraine was present in everyday life. People were afraid about the possible extension of the war into Moldova,” he recalls. This was the beginning of his mandate as Director of Cooperation at the Swiss Office in Moldova in August 2022.

By then, tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees were already in the country, inflation in Moldova reached over 30 per cent, energy prices were rising sharply, and many households were struggling to pay the bills.

At the same time, Moldova was accelerating its EU path: it applied for membership one week after Russia’s full-scale invasion and received candidate status in summer 2022.

There were two realities at once: the country was putting out fires, while also trying to move faster towards Europe.

When a crisis cannot be asked to wait

Beltrani remembers how a Moldovan official described that period with the phrase “We were agile to not be fragile.” He says it captured the situation in the country very well. The remarkable agility that Moldova showed in reacting at the same time to the arrival of many refugees, to the sharp increase in inflation and energy prices and to different forms of threat helped it avoid becoming fragile.

Before the war, Switzerland was already working in Moldova through long-term development programmes, the kind that combine policy work, training, new service models, provision of equipment, support to local partners and gradual handover to public institutions.

Beltrani describes the Swiss approach through three terms: hands-on, long-term, dialogue oriented. Switzerland funds projects, but, as he puts it, it does not simply step away after signing a grant agreement.

The Swiss office follows projects closely, visits them, discusses decisions with implementing partners and gives guidance. Swiss-funded projects are also oriented towards long-term goals, as they promote not only new policies, but also new skills and behaviours. This kind of changes needs time to materialise. Therefore, projects are often planned over a horizon of around twelve years, divided into phases.

“But then, when a crisis happens, you cannot say: ‘Sorry, we have our pre-defined objectives we need to go through long processes if we want to introduce changes.’ So, we adapted very rapidly,” Beltrani says.

According to him, in 2022 the Swiss Cooperation Office had to respond simultaneously to the crises that affected the country, while at the same time ensuring that what had already been built over years was not affected.

“We didn’t want our short-term humanitarian interventions to undermine the long-term objectives of development programmes. We had to balance these two elements within the programme,” he explains.

This became one of the central questions of Beltrani’s mandate: how to respond to urgent needs without losing sight of the systems Moldova would still need after the crisis.

Guido Beltrani during a field visit to a walnut processing facility in Moldova.
Guido Beltrani during a field visit to a walnut processing facility in Moldova. © Iurie Gandrabura

What remains after support

Systems built over years with donor support are sustainable only if they become part of everyday life, says Beltrani.

The reform of mental health system is a good example. Moldova now has 40 Community Mental Health Centres, providing services that are accessible for around 78’000 people with mental health and behavioural problems, as well as for general population that might need psychological assistance. It is the result of MENSANA, a 12-year Moldovan-Swiss project that helped move mental health care from large psychiatric hospitals closer to communities.

“All this might sound easy, but it is not at all. It is like a big puzzle. You have to change a bit all elements: establish a new legal basis, create the centres, equip the medical staff with new knowledge and medical protocols. And you also have to change attitudes among professionals, as well as in the public in order to reduce stigma and increase the acceptance for mental health issues and for the use of these specialised services,” Beltrani notes.

The same approach has been used in strengthening emergency healthcare. In a first step, in cooperation with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Switzerland provided support to purchase medical equipment for 13 stroke centres and four hospitals, and to train more than a thousand medical professionals on stroke care. Then, in a second step, the so-called Trauma Team model was introduced, changing the way how hospitals respond to patients with severe trauma: a multidisciplinary team is activated quickly, with clear roles, a trained leader and faster decisions. In the first 18 months, the model helped reduce examination time and was linked to a 72% decrease in the probability of in-hospital death. In this way, with the support from Switzerland and WHO, Moldova’s emergency care services have been enabled to save more and more patients.

For Beltrani, this is the kind of results that matter: support translates into new protocols, trained teams and better chances for the patients. “When I learnt about the first life saved in one of the regions of Moldova thanks to the new approach, it touched my heart,” Beltrani says. For Miljana Grbic, WHO Representative in Moldova, the cooperation is not only about equipment or training. “What remains is a genuine, measurable legacy,” she says. “For years to come, the people of Moldova will benefit from the improvements made in emergency care during this period.” 

Miljana Grbic, WHO Representative in Moldova, notes that without international collaboration it is much harder to implement long-term reforms.
Miljana Grbic, WHO Representative in Moldova, notes that without international collaboration it is much harder to implement long-term reforms. © Iurie Gandrabura

One of the visits that stayed with Beltrani came near the end of his mandate, in Țaul, at the Centre of Excellence in Horticulture and Agricultural Technologies (CEHTA). Around the same table were students, school staff, the director and economic actors. 

They were not discussing education as an abstract policy, but how a school can provide more practical teaching, use modern technologies and stay closer to the needs of the labour market.

For Beltrani, field visits were also a way to see whether a reform was becoming practical: not in policy documents, but in classrooms, workshops, greenhouses and conversations with the people who use them.

The wider Swiss co-funded programme behind Moldova’s vocational education and training (VET) reform supported the 2022 Law on Dual VET, new curricula, and the creation of over 7’200 in-company apprenticeship places through cooperation with 256 companies and 42 vocational institutions. At the veterinary college in Brătușeni, this shift becomes visible in a clinic, a lab and a farm, where students learn with real animals and real responsibility. The college grew from about 70 students in the late 1990s to around 400 today.

From shared services to shared trust

Alexei Buzu, Secretary General of the Government of Moldova, highlights the results of Swiss support for Moldova’s administration reform.

“In the region of Anenii Noi, three mayoralties will be united,” he says. “They were among the first in the country to take this decision and among the first to reach this final stage.”

He links this to the Swiss-supported Mă Implic project. Before moving toward amalgamation, he says, local administrations had learned to build a shared service together.

“The Swiss project had a double result,” Buzu says. “Citizens benefited from better services and investments, but these administrations also learned to work together. They reached a level of trust where they said: if we have worked together for so long, let’s unite.”

Mă Implic project now works with 14 groups of local public authorities, 56 communities and around 106’000 citizens. Earlier Swiss-supported projects promoting the development of local public services reached more than 560’000 people, improving their access to drinking water, sanitation and waste-management services.

Guido Beltrani says his mandate in Moldova was intense, demanding, but also the highlight of his career.
Guido Beltrani says his mandate in Moldova was intense, demanding, but also the highlight of his career. © Iurie Gandrabura

Beltrani calls Moldova “the place to be” for development professionals. He describes the past four years as “a marathon”: intense, sometimes exhausting, but also the highlight of his professional career.

The marathon is not yet over for Moldova. The country is moving fast toward the European Union, and the Swiss Cooperation Programme will continue support key reforms, while at the same time strengthening Moldova’s resilience. Beltrani, who will leave the country at the beginning of August, is looking forward to closely following the future progresses of Moldova also from abroad – and to coming back as a tourist to enjoy the company of his Moldovan friends and a glass of good Moldovan wine.

Start of page
Last update 29.07.2026