In the end, the results were better than Moldova\u2019s western allies had dared hope. In Sunday\u2019s parliamentary elections, the pro-EU party of president Maia Sandu won a convincing victory, confirming the westward path of this former Soviet republic of 2.4 million people.<\/p>\n
With nearly all votes counted, Sandu\u2019s ruling Action and Solidarity party had secured 50.03% of the vote<\/a>, compared with 24.26% for the pro-Russian Patriotic bloc. The solid win came despite widespread reports of Russian meddling and a series of shocks that could have toppled any incumbent government.<\/p>\n Since the last parliamentary elections in 2021, Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine has led to the settling of 135,000 people in Moldova \u2013 the highest per capita number of Ukrainian refugees in the world \u2013 and an energy price shock that sent inflation spiralling to a 34% peak. Despite these headwinds, the PAS saw its share of the vote drop by less than 3% compared with 2021.<\/p>\n For Sandu, a former World Bank official who was re-elected Moldova\u2019s president in 2024<\/a>, it is an emphatic victory. She wants Moldova to join the EU by 2030. With a secure parliamentary majority, rather than the divided coalition many pollsters had predicted, it should be easier to push through the demanding political and economic reforms required to join the union.<\/p>\n It was an equally important result for the EU, which has invested political capital in Moldova. The European Commission has pledged \u20ac1.9bn (\u00a31.7bn) in grants and cheap loans to Moldova to build infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals and internet cables to boost the economy and speed its arrival into the European single market. Last month, the leaders of Germany, France and Poland made a high-profile joint visit to Moldova on the anniversary of its independence<\/a> to express solidarity.<\/p>\n But sighs of relief are tempered by understanding that this is only one chapter in a long story. \u201cThe fight is not over,\u201d Moldova\u2019s former prime minister Natalia Gavrili\u021ba told a security conference in Warsaw on Monday. \u201cOf course, we are very determined to carry out the reforms with all the challenges and capacity constraints and so on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Clara Volintiru, the head of the Bucharest office of the German Marshall Fund, said it was clear that electoral mobilisation in favour of the pro-Moscow Patriotic bloc had not been massive. But that did not mean Russia\u2019s \u201ctactics of manipulation and interference\u201d had failed, she cautioned, with Russian interference focused on the full electoral cycle, not just Sunday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal of the Russian interference is to amplify societal distrust, to diminish the confidence that the Moldovan public has not just in its government and president, but also in its European future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In the run-up to the vote, Moldovan authorities accused Russia of spending hundreds of millions of euros in an attempt to tilt the results. Dozens of men were arrested<\/a>, accused of travelling to Serbia for training in how to break through police cordons and resist security officers. Meanwhile, a Reuters investigation<\/a> found that Orthodox priests in the highly religious country had been treated to all-expenses paid trips to Russia and received sums up to \u20ac1,200 (\u00a31,000) \u2013 more than double the average monthly wage \u2013 for promoting anti-western narratives.<\/p>\n The Kremlin has denied meddling in Moldova\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n Volintiru said Moldova was \u201ca laboratory\u201d where Russia was testing \u201ca wide array of tools and tactics\u201d that could be deployed in other European democracies. The analyst cited unpublished polling from the Moldovan government\u2019s StratCom centre she had knowledge of, which showed that 70% of the population felt an elevated level of anxiety. \u201cThere is a widespread anxiety and fear across the population. And this is the end game of Russian interference, not just to promote one or another political option, but to make sure that the entire democratic process is challenged or there is doubt laying over it.\u201d<\/p>\n Against this backdrop, Moldova is pressing ahead with the ambitious goal of joining the EU by 2030. It is a high bar. During the past 18 years the EU has admitted only one country, Croatia, amid widespread mistrust of the enlargement process in western Europe, especially France, Denmark and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n Many politicians contend that Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed everything. France\u2019s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, told the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday that after \u201ca form of scepticism about enlargement in France \u2026 there has been a shift in the last few years\u201d, as people realise that extending the bloc\u2019s influence further to Ukraine, Moldova and western Balkans \u201cis a geopolitical necessity that will export security and stability for Europe\u201d and present an economic opportunity.<\/p>\n That does not mean the path is clear. Moldova\u2019s EU membership talks are stalled, because Hungary\u2019s Kremlin-friendly government refuses to open substantive negotiations with Ukraine. Ukraine\u2019s and Moldova\u2019s EU applications are informally linked, meaning one objection can stymie both.<\/p>\n The European Council president, Ant\u00f3nio Costa, who chairs EU summits, is trying to solve the problem by dropping the requirement for every step in the negotiating process to be approved by unanimity. Big milestones, such as opening and closing negotiations, would still require all members to agree, but other decisions \u2013 such as opening talks on EU policies \u2013 could proceed with a majority vote, the Guardian understands. In this way Costa hopes to keep momentum for Moldova, Ukraine and western Balkan countries seeking to join the EU.<\/p>\n Volintru believes enlargement has become a question of political will, not simply a bureaucratic process. \u201cThe geopolitical pressures are very high and I think Brussels understands very well the stakes that are involved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the end, the results were better than Moldova\u2019s western allies had dared hope. In Sunday\u2019s parliamentary elections,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-460498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115287805538247337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}