Moldova moves closer to Europe

Anna Sonny, 5 December 2014

Three pro-European parties look set to form a coalition after Moldova’s elections last Sunday. The Liberal Democrats, the Democrats and the Liberals took 44% of the vote altogether and aim to achieve EU candidate status by 2017.

But voting was affected by the banning of a pro-Russian party shortly before Moldovans went to the polls. Patria was dismissed from the elections by the courts after being accused by pro-European parties of receiving illegal funding from abroad, supposedly from Russia. But even pro-European voters saw this as a politically motivated abuse of the judiciary.

The Socialists, who are pro-Russian and want to join Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union, got the most votes (21%) but failed to secure a majority.The Communist party gained 17% of the vote but believe they had votes taken away by a ‘clone’ party – the Reformed Communist Party, who use a similar logo and an identical acronym, and gained 5% of the vote.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, lamented Patria’s dismissal; he also claimed that Moldova’s labour migrants in Russia had been denied a vote, and complained that the breakaway state of Trans-Dniester, which has been under Russian control since the 1990s, did not take part in the elections.

The voting in Moldova took place against the backdrop of the brutal, on-going conflict in neighbouring Ukraine, triggered by a familiar tension between closer integration with the EU and traditional ties with Russia.

There are fears that something similar could play out in Moldova – the EU and the Kremlin certainly seem to be wrestling over the country. Last year, Russia threatened a mass deportation of Moldovan migrants; this year in April, the EU granted Moldovans visa-free travel. When Moldova ratified an EU Association Agreement last year, Russia banned imports of Moldovan wine. This was a hard hit for the poorest country in Europe, which is almost entirely dependent on its agricultural produce, with wine accounting for over 25% of agricultural exports.

With the formation of the new coalition government, it looks like Moldova will stay on the track of closer integration with the EU. But for Moldovans, the choice between the EU and Russia is not as clear cut as the choice between good and bad; one Moldovan political analyst described the elections as a choice between ‘pro-Europe crooks and pro-Russia crooks.’