Ina Coseru, MP of the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS), gave an interview for the FES/ APE foreign policy newsletter in which we discussed the energy crisis created by Russia in the Transnistrian separatist region with the aim of economically and socially destabilizing Moldova ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections. We also talked about how crises can be turned into opportunities, about PAS priorities in relation to other parties in order to keep Moldova on the European course, but also about possible peace scenarios in Ukraine. All these are among the most important challenges of the Moldovan leadership in 2025. So we invite you to read more about all these issues in the following lines:

What are the most important challenges in 2025 for the Republic of Moldova? And I would like to start with the energy and humanitarian crisis in the Transnistrian region, which was deliberately provoked by the Russian Federation before the parliamentary elections due this year?

It depends on whether we move further along the path of European integration or the situation may change. Whether things will come to a standstill or whether things will slow down.

The citizens of the Republic of Moldova choose European integration and expect our country to be part of the European Union. This humanitarian crisis in the Transnistrian region is very dangerous and the Russian Federation, which is very keen to see us back in its sphere of influence, is playing this card. It depends now on how we will be able to overcome this crisis and whether we will also be able to see it as an opportunity to reintegrate our country.

Crisis or opportunity?

We know that any crisis also brings opportunities, but does the Republic of Moldova have the capacity to somehow take advantage of this crisis to resolve this Transnistrian file that has been dragging on for over 30 years? Could it also be a new crisis that would be difficult for PAS to manage, but also an opportunity to perhaps salvage a first term in office marked by many overlapping crises?

It is obvious that it is also an opportunity, it’s just that every crisis, as we have seen in the past - the energy crisis of 2021, the war of 2022 triggered by the Russian Federation in Ukraine with all its consequences for the Republic of Moldova – has costed us a lot. We have paid very high costs. In 2021, when the energy crisis started, which was not just a crisis, but an instrument of blackmail by the Russian Federation, applied not just in the Republic of Moldova but throughout the European continent, cost us all, including countries in Europe which have large financial resources. We should invest these resources in alternative energy production, in the search for new energy sources and so on. 

The Transnistrian crisis is exactly the same. It is an opportunity, but it also implies certain costs that we need to be able to pay in order to move quickly towards this goal – the reintegration of the country.

However, when we talk about the reintegration of the Transnistrian region into the Republic of Moldova, we have to assume all the costs that this entails. There are over 300 000 citizens on the left bank of the Dniester and they are all Moldovan citizens.

Every payment – salaries, pensions, social payments, compensation – that we have been making to the citizens of the Republic of Moldova since the energy crisis started – and we are talking about hundreds of millions of euros that has been offered by European partners – has been to pay compensations so that citizens do not pay those new high tariffs. Because while the prices of energy resources have increased, the salaries and pensions did not double or triple. It was not possible to do that, because we were and still are in the vicinity of a war.

This situation is that the economic sector cannot develop to the extent that we would like to. New investors are not coming. Investors who are in the Republic of Moldova are afraid for their future. Some of them are leaving because nobody knows when the war will stop. This is despite the fact that 2025, as the new President of the United States of America says, is the year when he wants a peace agreement to be signed. And here, of course, the Transnistrian region can be a component of that agreement, because that is how we would like to see that agreement.

Transdnistrian conflict to go hand in hand with peace in Ukraine?

Will you try to push the Transnistrian file, as far as possible, on the agenda of the upcoming peace talks between Ukraine and Russia?

Exactly. We are talking about the Transnistrian region with the Russian military troops and the stockpile of munitions at Colbasna on the border with Ukraine. All this continues to jeopardize the security of this state, if the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine is signed without the Transnistrian issue being taken into account.  

Now, even under these conditions, we understand that the Russian Federation has done everything possible to advance on the southern front line in Ukraine in order to be able to make that junction with the Transnistrian region, so that it can control the entire southern part of Ukraine. Ukraine also has an interest in seeing the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict and the establishment of security here in the region as a further guarantee of what a lasting peace means.

Because even if Ukraine does not become a NATO member in the near future, those guarantees will allow Ukraine to maintain peace for a longer period of time. They are absolutely necessary to be included in this peace agreement. Therefore, the Transnistrian region is one of those guarantees.

How do you see Russia’s actions in addition to this energy crisis it is generating? Do you see perhaps an acceleration of propaganda and other elements of hybrid warfare as we get closer to the date of this year’s parliamentary elections?

Yes, we will continue to see these actions. The propaganda has not stopped. We saw it in the autumn last year, when it intensified at full speed. Russian propaganda has intoxicated our society, especially people who are Russian-speaking. I am constantly explaining this and emphasizing it to our development partners.

We have citizens of the Republic of Moldova who have been living in European countries for more than 10 years and understand very well what the European Union means. But we have also Moldovan citizens who speak Russian and we need to reach out to them. It is very important to reach out with messages also in the space of toxic propaganda, which, of course, ruins any perception of European integration. Propaganda is based and built strictly on people’s fears.

Propaganda claims that European integration would mean war for us, or we will freeze and have nothing to eat and so on. So it is important to communicate with these people who are victims of Russian propaganda and it is important to do it the languages spoken in the Republic of Moldova.

More effective dialogue and more accurate messages to the public

Do you plan to do more grassroots, more door-to-door campaigning, more talking to people than you have done so far?

We have done this every time, in every type of election. In 2016, we worked with grassroots people. The important thing is, as I said, to speak both in Romanian and Russian, so that we do not have a bigger and bigger camp of people who do not understand what is happening - people who do not understand what reforms are being implemented in the country, what the energy crisis means and perceive it in a different way, that is, according to the false narratives of propaganda.

So, it is important to communicate, to learn from the lessons of the last year’s presidential election campaign with those 10% of fraudulent votes. We need to stop admitting that in this year’s parliamentary election campaign.

It is good to communicate with all the pro-European parties in order to have a common message, because we are quite divided and this time I think the people are going to penalise us for that.

Negotiations and scenarios for possible pro-European alliances

It is very hard to believe that PAS will be able to get enough votes to govern on its own, as it is the case at present. Do you currently have a strategy to discuss possible governing coalitions with various pro-European political parties? Have you started such discussions or is it too early and you are waiting for the results of the parliamentary elections?

We have started to discuss with several pro-European parties in order to find that formula and format through which we can consolidate, either in an electoral bloc or as part of a joint electoral list. It does not matter what the consolidation of pro-European forces will look like.

If this does not happen, I believe that the pro-European parties will have more to lose than to gain, but we need to do our best to ensure that we continue to secure the European course.

This is what the whole of Europe – which has opened so many doors for us in such a short time, in record time, even in the situation when some reforms have only started but have not yet borne fruit – is waiting for. It’s high time now to deliver new results. Everyone expects us to secure the European course. That is what we need to do.

Ambitious plans for relations with Brussels

My last question is about European integration and reforms. Do you plan to accelerate these processes in these six months or so of your mandate? Where are we now in this respect?

We have prepared ourselves, when it comes to bilateral screening, to request the opening of negotiations on some chapters of the first cluster related to fundamental issues and the acquis communautaire. More specifically, on the part relating to democratic institutions, the justice sector and public administration, because this is where we would like to prepare very well and quickly, with the full support of our European partners. In this way, we can prepare for the next elections, but with the reforms of the democratic institutions in place, because the democratic institutions and this chapter of the fundamental issues are related to the electoral system, media and free speech. This is where we need to have more lessons learnt and be able to apply them.

At the same time, the justice sector is a chapter, as the Europeans say, with which accession negotiations open and close. However, justice reform does not happen overnight. The example of the Balkan countries demonstrates this. But, of course, I don’t want anyone to understand it as an excuse.

We need to move fast and learn from what is there, from the example of the Balkans, and take the best practices. Now in the first half of the year, Poland will hold the presidency of the European Council and we will ask for the opening of accession negotiations on these chapters. I hope that in spring we will be able to move because we have already completed the bilateral screening process.

We also have the position of European partners on these chapters. We will also have messages to communicate to the citizens of the Republic of Moldova in the parliamentary election campaign, in case we succeed on this dimension again. Because this is what we communicated to the population in 2024 – when the referendum on European integration was held – that things happened very quickly and the Europeans helped us.

EU states got organized very quickly and approved the candidate status in 2022. As a result, we worked on that list of conditionalities, after which in October 2023 the report was issued and in December 2023 the negotiations were approved. Then we also requested that the intergovernmental conference be organized in the first half of 2024. Even this happened though nobody believed that we would succeed. But it was achieved. So if we continue to keep this very high speed in the European integration process, we will also have certain messages in the election campaign.

The openness of Europeans is unbelievable, it’s maximum. All the European Union countries that I personally visited together with my colleagues asked us how they can help us. They told us: we are here with financial resources, with institutional memory, with all the examples, you just have to tell us what you need, make a list of needs.

Now only one thing is expected from us – to win the elections, to unite all the European forces and to move forward so that we can fulfil the promise and the goal we have set ourselves, namely that the Republic of Moldova will become a member of the European Union in 2030.

It may be a little late in happening, but the window of opportunity is open now. Such moments do not come very often in history and we need to make the most of them. It will be regrettable if we do not understand how narrow and short this window of opportunity is for Moldova’s accession to the EU.

Thank you!