A sign on a road, financed by the European Union, outside Comrat, Moldova. Photo / Andrei Pungovschi, Bloomberg via The Washington Post
A billboard along the road between the Moldovan town of Calarasi and the capital Chisinau contains no slogan or imperative, just a simple statement of fact.
“Part of your electricity bill is paid by the Government with the help of the European Union,” it declares.
The message also reveals the dilemma facing Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party ahead of today’s parliamentary election.
How to sell closer ties with the West while a cost-of-living crisis bites in one of Europe’s poorest countries.
Wedged between Romania and Ukraine, the tiny nation of 2.4 million people has outsized geopolitical importance.
Moldova is a bellwether for Russia’s interference and hybrid attacks in Europe, the focus of a tug-of-war as Moscow tries to bring the former Soviet state back into its sphere of influence while Europe counters that by promising EU membership.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week called on the world leaders to support Moldova in the face of Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the election.
President Maia Sandu and her allies in the Party of Action and Solidarity, or PAS, are trying to show Moldovans that European integration isn’t just another story of a brighter future tomorrow, but a transformational change that’s already brought benefits here and now.
A referendum last October on whether to enshrine the goal of joining the EU in the constitution passed narrowly.
Opinion polls show PAS is expected to lose its parliamentary majority with a pro-Russian group placing second. Crucially, though, about 30% of voters were undecided ahead of the vote.
Outside an agricultural store in Calarasi, some 50km from Chisinau, Ivan Curmei encapsulates the mood despite billions of euros spent by Brussels to help Moldova weather economic crises and build schools, roads, and upgrade energy infrastructure.
With inflation above 7%, among the highest in Europe, Curmei says the main thing on his mind are “these prices”. He jerks a thumb toward sacks of flour from neighbouring Ukraine. The 68-year-old doesn’t care for politicians, but he will reluctantly vote for PAS.
With a large Russian-speaking minority, Moldova is divided linguistically and culturally between the rhetoric of pro-Kremlin and pro-Brussels worldviews.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presidential executive devised a plan to intervene in the vote, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
Tactics included recruitment of Moldovans abroad, protests and a disinformation campaign. Last week, the authorities detained dozens of people to foil what they said was a Russian plot to destabilise the election.
“It’s very clear that Russia wants to create conditions at least to push Moldova into political chaos,” said Iulian Groza, executive director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, a Moldovan think-tank.
“If not, then propelling a loyal majority into parliament that is at least ambivalent towards our European accession process.”
While a majority of Moldovans support joining the EU, they hold their politicians in less esteem. In 2014, more than 10% of the country’s GDP was siphoned off from three state-owned banks in a brazen scheme involving public officials.
Eager for a success story on its turbulent eastern flank, the EU has allocated a record €1.8 billion ($3.6b) for the coming years to support Moldova’s integration efforts.
The EU has also sought to bolster Sandu’s image ahead of the ballot, with the leaders of Poland, France and Germany sharing a stage with her at a pro-European rally on Moldova’s Independence Day in August.
Igor Dodon, the former president defeated by Sandu who leads the pro-Russian Socialist Party, said Western powers were interfering in the election campaign.
Constantin, who ekes out a living selling fruit and vegetables from his garden in Calarasi’s central market, is tired of what he sees as empty promises from parties of all stripes.
He vowed not to vote for the ruling party, which he blames for the loss of his former job during the coronavirus pandemic.
“These politicians come every four years and hand out a leaflet,” the 59-year-old former accountant said. “What would I need a leaflet for?”
Constantin’s frustration swelled after a group of PAS members and activists strolled through the stalls, touting Moldova’s bid to kick off the EU accession process.
Among them was Nicu Popescu, one of the party’s top candidates for a seat in parliament and a former foreign minister. He acknowledged that creating the foundations of a prosperous state is a work in progress.
“Most people understand that you don’t build a skyscraper overnight, or quadruple your GDP per capita,” Popescu said.
Whatever the setbacks, he said, Moldovans can see what war and dictatorship have brought and “don’t want that to be replicated in Moldova”.
The PAS party’s four years in power have been rocky. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing through Moldova and forced the fragile economy to pivot even more westward.
At the same time, Moldova weaned itself off Russian energy supplies and secured the start of lengthy EU accession negotiations last June.
About 65% of Moldova’s exports now go to the EU. And in a sign of the new reality, even Transnistria, a breakaway region that hosts Russian troops, sends 77% of its exports to the bloc.
The trouble politically is that PAS “monopolises” the EU integration narrative while failing to fulfil promises, according to Chisinau Mayor Ion Ceban, whose Alternativa bloc is polling third.
For Mark Tkachuk, a historian who leads the smaller Civic Congress party within Alternativa, PAS views the EU as a civilisational “cargo cult” when it should focus on reducing poverty in Moldova.
Alternativa says it’s in favour of joining the EU and would consider entering a coalition government with any other parties that share its principles, including PAS, according to Ceban.
As for relations with Russia, the group is pragmatic, especially when it comes to energy imports, said Tkachuk.
“Sandu declares that Russian gas smells of death, but we buy Russian gas through eight intermediaries,” Tkachuk said in an interview in a library in downtown Chisinau.
“Today, okay it smells like death, but probably of the death of Moldovan citizens whose gas prices have increased three or four times.”
Moldova’s Ministry of Energy disputes that characterisation of why gas prices are higher. It blames Russia for weaponising energy, “trying to blackmail European countries”.
Like many depopulating countries in eastern Europe, Moldova exports its youth as well.
Flyers offering work in Europe are ubiquitous on the leafy streets of Chisinau, where young waiters at the wine bars and street cafes are keen to be tipped in Romanian currency.
At the market in Calarasi, several vendors said their sons and daughters have lived in the EU for years.
That part of the million-strong diaspora was instrumental in Sandu’s re-election as president last year, by about 55% to 45% against a candidate backed by a pro-Russia campaign, and the success of the EU referendum.
Emigration has not always proven easy.
One vegetable seller, frustrated with his meagre income, pointed to the struggles of his four siblings in Western Europe and insisted that under the Russians, at least, everybody had bread to eat.
Overhearing the remark, an elderly customer scoffed and snapped that Moscow had only brought oppression.
PAS’ opponents have sought to put the cost- of-living crisis before geopolitics.
Politicians from Dodon’s Socialists, who once regularly travelled to Moscow, have toned down their heavy pro-Russian messaging.
They say they’re critical supporters of European integration, though not at the expense of ties with Moscow.
“People are tired of being divided into pro-European, pro-Russian and so on,” said Olga Cebotari, a Socialist leader. “They want to be pro-Moldova.”
Ecaterina Gavrilita, a 68-year-old pensioner from Calarasi, is still waiting for local authorities to get her a new hearing aid and medication she badly needs.
She’s still willing to give Sandu’s PAS allies a chance, describing the president as a “simple woman who does what she says”.
Gavrilita pointed to a newly renovated roof of the local school.
And whatever the wider dissatisfaction, Russia no longer has a coherent project to offer Moldova, said Vladimir Solovyov, an analyst writing on Moldovan politics.
“I don’t think the opposition can overturn European integration,” he said.
“Because it means money, grants, credit and a load of projects. Nobody from the opposition leaders can bring themselves to end that story, because then they won’t be in power for long.”
- With assistance from Andra Timu and Alberto Nardelli.
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