On 30 June 2025, the Eastern Partnership Road Safety Observatory hosted its inaugural regional road safety conference in Chisinau, Moldova.
Our aim was to take a deep dive into some of the key issues and challenges related to data and road safety policy from a regional perspective. This include the use of standardised frameworks (CADaS and mini-CADaS) and interagency data sharing, visualisation, and presentation of data with a specific focus on the reporting of serious road traffic injury, which was the theme of our keynote address by Antonio Avenoso of the European Transport Safety Council.
The conference was attended by more than 60 key stakeholders from across the region. Victor Grosu, State Secretary, Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moldova gave the opening address, setting the tone for an important day of dialogue and action. This was followed by welcoming remarks by Tamar Sulukhia, Head of the EaP RSO Technical Secretariat, who emphasised the crucial role of regional cooperation and data-driven policy making for road safety.
We were pleased to be able to bring in expert voices on road safety data from our wider EaP RSO network, with data experts Sandra Virbukaite and Aivaras Vilkelis presenting on the development of the EaP RSO database and examples from Lithuania. Dragoslav Kukic gave an impressive demonstration of Serbia’s advanced data platform that gathers local and national level data and presents it in a digestible format for both policy makers and the public. Elene Seturidze from the EaP RSO presented initial comparable data on road safety across our countries of operation, applying the formula for calculating the value for statistical life in the context road safety to highlight the economic impacts of road crashes.
While the conference took a regional outlook, we were keen to showcase successful examples and developments from Moldova through the panel ‘Spotlight on Road Safety in Moldova’. Speakers included Grigore Guzun, of General Police Inspectorate of Moldova, Radu Rogovei, Head of Road Development Policy Department, Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Elena Lungu, Senior Transport Specialist, World Bank, Tatiana Mihailova, Director of Automobile Club of Moldova, and Derran Williams, Senior Health and Safety Advisor, at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The core of this discussion covered Moldova’s recently published National Road Safety Programme, which has 62 clear and tangible targets to improve road safety and reduce road casualities by 50% by 2030.
In our concluding panel, we drew on the theme of this year’s UN Global Road Safety Week, Safe Walking & Cycling, to discuss improved data collection and analysis on pedestrian and cyclist risk across the region. EaP RSO national road safety consultants – Poghos Shahinyan (Armenia), Virginia Mandalac (Moldova), Gela Kvashilava (Georgia), and Oksana Romanukha (Ukraine) – took to the stage to talk about the opportunities and challenges of promoting sustainable mobility in the region, and discuss how improving data collection and analysis of transport usage and needs can build and support active travel initiatives.
The conference theme ‘Leveraging data for road safety policy making’ built on the EaP RSO’s engagement at the Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Marrakech, where we moderated the plenary session on Leveraging Data, and the ITF Ministerial Summit 2025, where we spoke about harnessing data and statistics for transport policy making. We look forward to taking these themes further in the future, building on the outcomes of this conference and using the lessons learned to deepen the work of the Observatory and provide even better insight to our participating countries of operation.
