Editorial by sociologist Vitalie Spranceana, for FES/APE foreign policy newsletter.

What will we be left with from the social year 2025? Probably the realisation that, broadly speaking, things have remained unchanged, some have even deteriorated, and the outlook for the future is far from optimistic in the absence of urgent and far-reaching measures.

From the multitude of events that marked this year, I have selected only a few that I consider the most representative. On 30 January, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) published the preliminary results of the 2024 Population and Housing Census. The most important conclusion of this standard population-counting exercise is that the Republic of Moldova is undergoing a constant, dramatic and, in practice, irreversible process of population decline: according to the NBS, the usually resident population stood at 2,401,200 people, representing a decrease of 13.9 percent compared to 2014.

In other words, Moldova is depopulating at an average rate of about 1.3 percent per year, which places it among the countries experiencing the most pronounced demographic decline. Forecasts for the coming years remain equally bleak.

Of course, caution is needed when discussing these “declinist” concerns, as they can easily fuel eugenicist or reactionary policies — when demographic decline is blamed on the “excessive” promotion of women’s rights — or xenophobic policies, when certain groups call for limiting the migration of foreigners to Moldova or reducing the birth rate of ethnic groups deemed “undesirable”, under the pretext that they would “replace” the local population.

Demographic decline

There are many causes of demographic decline in the Republic of Moldova. Among the most important are intense external migration driven by the search for better-paid jobs, declining birth rates, accelerated population ageing, structural changes in the family, and high mortality rates.

Any plan for the country’s future development should take into account this demographic reality, which places significant pressure on the pension and health systems, while also imposing clear limits on economic growth and the country’s development model.

Of course, governments have relatively limited tools at their disposal to intervene directly in the demographic sphere. Increasing the birth rate or even halting its decline — as examples such as South Korea show — cannot be achieved through simple financial transfers. However, governments are not completely powerless.

For example, they can influence other factors contributing to demographic decline, such as reducing mortality, through appropriate public policies. In the Republic of Moldova, in 2023, the overall mortality rate stood at 13.7 cases per thousand inhabitants, placing the country among the top 10–15 countries worldwide for this indicator. At the same time, infant mortality — the number of children under one year of age who died per 1,000 live births — reached 10 cases in 2023, approximately three times higher than the European Union average.

The Republic of Moldova also records unfavourable values in terms of adult mortality.

These indicators can be directly influenced through active policies aimed at strengthening the health system, promoting healthy lifestyles, and expanding preventive interventions. However, the Republic of Moldova still lacks a coherent vision and sufficient political will in this area, while the current model of economic growth — based on maintaining low labour costs and a low level of complexity in production processes — has largely exhausted its potential.

A fragile economy

The trend of stagnant economic growth in the Republic of Moldova has continued. Gross domestic product declined in both the second and third quarters of 2024, as well as in the first quarter of 2025, and the economy was kept afloat, among other things, by increased consumer spending, largely fuelled by consumer credit. However, this is by no means a sustainable development.

Another area where systemic intervention is lacking is the opening of the country to labour migration from other states. Such an opening could contribute in the short term to alleviating labour shortages and, in the long term, to slowing population decline. The Republic of Moldova could become an attractive destination for migrants, but this would require guarantees of legal protection and decent working conditions that would encourage them to stay. However, it is difficult to imagine how this could be achieved given that even Moldovan workers do not currently enjoy such standards. In addition, society would need to be prepared to accept multiculturalism, religious pluralism, and ethnic diversity, yet this essential long-term effort has not been taken up by any actor so far.

Census data have also revealed another problematic dimension of the country’s territorial development model: almost half of the population of the Republic of Moldova lives in the municipality of Chișinău and in several districts in its immediate vicinity. The town of Durlești, a suburb of the capital, has become the third-largest city in the country by population, while the commune of Trușeni, part of the municipality of Chișinău, has a population of approximately 11,000 — comparable to the town of Hîncești and larger than most district centres in the country (by comparison, the town of Briceni has about 6,000 inhabitants).

This hyper-concentration of the population in the capital directly contributes to the underdevelopment of other regions of the country, whose inhabitants experience lower-quality social and health services, more limited access to economic infrastructure, fewer services, and reduced cultural life. At present, for example, there are no functioning cinemas outside the municipality of Chișinău.

In the absence of a coherent and long-term territorial policy aimed at developing regions outside the capital, this trend will continue, with serious consequences both for Chișinău — where housing prices, for example, have doubled in recent years — and, even more severely, for the rest of the country.

Impoverishment of the population and polarisation of society

Among the trends that continued to worsen in 2025 was the impoverishment of the population. In real terms, wages increased by only 1–2 percent, despite a nominal increase of around 10 percent, while pensions, expressed in real terms, actually declined by between 0.3 percent and 0.6 percent. The current government, like its predecessors, has for years persisted in promoting the notion that a prosperous economy can be built on the basis of a poor population, even though reality consistently contradicts this logic.

The long election year, which began in October 2024 with the referendum on Moldova’s accession to the European Union and the presidential elections, and ended in September 2025 with the parliamentary elections, was marked by intense political polarisation, fuelled by both ruling and opposition forces.

The level of discriminatory discourse — at times with xenophobic and inter-ethnic hatred overtones — directed against various groups; the rush to identify internal and external enemies; the stigmatisation of ethnic, social, age, or status groups and their political choices; as well as the radicalisation of political discourse through the quasi-criminalisation of divergent positions, has probably never been so intense since the early 1990s.

Decades of efforts by civil society organisations and initiatives to build social cohesion, pluralism of opinion, and a culture of democratic debate have largely been sacrificed in favour of short-term electoral gains. The year 2026 is not an election year. However, it should become the year in which the reconstruction of society begins.