In the last five years, Moldova has gone from success story to captured state. Any EU support for the country should be linked to the fight against corruption.
Fighting corruption in Moldova requires the government to address widespread conflicts of interest, increase transparency, and separate state functions from oligarchs’ interests.
The dramatic arrest of former prime minister Vlad Filat is probably the work of his fiercest political rival utilizing an unprecedented mistake. It will help expose Moldova’s culture of corruption but may put a halt to its integration with the EU.
A new antigovernment protest movement against rampant corruption in Moldova might finally lead to real change in a politically rotten country.
There is sobering news for the EU in two new polls from Georgia and Moldova, showing that public support for the European project is faltering.
The EU needs to realize that its neighborhood policy is a political not a technical tool, operating in a politicized environment where major conflicts take place.
EU support and membership can help post-Communist countries become modern democracies, but it is citizens who have the power to complete—or reverse—those transformations.
Moldova has become part of a geostrategic competition between Brussels and Moscow. Russia will be determined not to let the country slip away from its influence.
The recent parliamentary election in Moldova has sharpened the competition between the EU and Russia. Moldova’s pro-Western political parties have their work cut out.
The Ukrainian crisis has shown to the South Caucasian states that deciding between European and Eurasian integration comes at a high price, but that indecisiveness is an even worse path.