Moldova Elects Pro-EU Government in Promising Step for Accession Bid

The Triumphal Arch in the Moldovan capital Chişinǎu, which will seat a new parliament after recent elections.

Moldova’s Europe-aligned Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) trounced the Russian-backed Patriotic Bloc in parliamentary elections on September 29 in a result that strengthened the country’s bid to join the European Union.

President Maia Sandu’s party took 50.2 percent of the vote compared to the Patriotic Bloc’s 24.2 percent. This majority allows PAS to form a government without needing to join in coalition with smaller parties that passed the minimum five percent threshold. 

Moldovan officials and independent watchdogs accuse Russia of conducting mass disinformation campaigns and buying votes, a claim Moscow denies. Russian leaders and the Patriotic Bloc in turn cried foul, claiming that over 200,000 people in the eastern separatist region of Transdniestria were denied voting rights.

The Moldovan government alleges that Russian groups spent over $200 million to influence the election. The former Soviet bloc country, with a population of about 2.4 million, is no stranger to Russian meddling in its internal affairs. Since 1992, when Transdniestrian separatists fought a brief war and declared unrecognized independence from Moldova, Russia has maintained a military presence in the area, purportedly to serve peacekeeping functions and protect stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons.

Events earlier this year served as a disturbing reminder of Moldovan dependence on Russian infrastructure. In January, after a natural gas agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, eastern Moldova was forced to rely on limited reserves of coal to heat homes in the winter. 

Since gaining independence in 1992, Moldova has been a battleground for competing Russian and European interests. In 2022, articles for Moldova’s entry into the EU were introduced alongside Ukrainian ones. The new PAS majority seeks to join the EU by 2028. Leaders in Poland and Ukraine and the president of the European Commission celebrated the electoral results as a victory for European democracy.

Russia has increasingly turned Moldova into a training ground for mass disinformation campaigns. On September 18, Moldovan officials conducted more than 250 raids, detaining 74 people, some of whom allegedly received training from Russian groups on how to incite election unrest. Russian entities also deployed AI-generated websites deriding PAS and the EU, while paying “engagement farms” in Africa to amplify misinformation on platforms like YouTube and Telegram.

Although geopolitics dominated this election cycle, the new parliament faces domestic challenges as well. Moldova’s GDP per capita sits at about a quarter of the average for European and central Asian countries. Inflation stands at seven percent year-on-year. The fragile economy has also been strained by an influx of refugees fleeing the war in neighboring Ukraine.

Critics note that Moldova’s government has not been blameless in undermining the democratic process. In the run up to the election, Moldovan government officials shut down opposition broadcast channels without judicial approval, withheld economic data, closed bridges to polling stations in Transdniestria, and cut the number of voting stations in the separatist region by more than half. While Moldova may finally be escaping foreign influence, substantial domestic reforms remain necessary.