Almost five years after Brexit, will the Europe of Twenty-Eight see the light of day again? This Sunday, October 20, the Moldovans elect their president and, at the same time, decide on a potential accession of their country to the EU after negotiations started last June with Brussels – in the wake of those initiated with Ukraine .
For Maia Sandu, who arrived at the helm of the former Soviet republic in 2020 after a brief experience as Prime Minister, the fierce opposition to Vladimir Putin and the promise of a European future are the main campaign arguments. “This referendum was not legally necessary. It’s a trick to increase your chances of re-election”observes Denis Cenusa, associate member of the Moldovan Expert-Grup think tank, cited by Liberation.
Problem: as in the case of Volodymyr Zelensky’s country, whose integration would represent a catastrophe for French farmers (already angry for months at this unfair competition), this enlargement could have direct consequences on France.
Dumping social
If the ardent defenders of Moldova’s accession to the EU, such as the socialist MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, consider, not without European utopianism, that this would make it possible to achieve “the reunification of the continent”, in reality, this risks first and foremost weighing on workers in the Member States.
And for good reason: in the country of some 2.6 million inhabitants, the average salary, one of the lowest in Europe, does not exceed 270 euros per month, almost three times less than in its neighbor. Romanian (around 750 euros) and almost six times less than in France.
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Thus, its European integration could encourage factory relocations – for lower cost labor – and the use of workers posted to other EU countries. And, as a result, increasingly drive down the income of employees, French included. In short… good big social dumping, denounced – rightly – by the RN deputy Julien Odoulbut also by the spokesperson for the Communist Party Léon Deffontaines.
Stirring up tensions with Russia
After a meeting with his Moldovan counterpart last March, Emmanuel Macron did not fail to support the candidacy of the former Eastern bloc country. “ Despite threats, pressure and intimidation, the Republic of Moldova has chosen freedom, independence and Europe. France supports this choice by providing its full support to the reforms launched to prepare the Moldovan State to join the European Union.then assured the two heads of state in a press release conjoint.
But in a context of war in Ukraine, seeing a new formerly Soviet state join the European Union risks inflaming diplomatic relations between Paris and Moscow, already greatly weakened since the head of state mentioned some time ago months, the hypothesis of sending French troops to the front to support the Ukrainian army – which had provoked the ire of Vladimir Putin.
Given the more or less official attempts at interference by each camp, this crucial vote, which will be scrutinized throughout Europe, promises to be electric: while the boss of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced record EU aid of 1.8 billion euros for Moldova less than a week before the vote, Russia paid some 130,000 people to slip a “no” ballot into the ballot box and deployed a thousand other stratagems to influence the outcome of this referendum – as reported Le Figaro. A game of geopolitical chess where, for once, “European citizens” serve as pawns.
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