At the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit of November 29, 2013, Moldova will enter a new stage of relations with the European Union. What will it bring and how will it influence the life of the Moldovans from the country and from abroad? What will each of us gain and what should we do for this benefit to become possible? How will the new conditions affect Moldova’s relations with other countries? The IPN Agency aims to look for answers to these and other questions worrying society, together with you, within the series of articles “Association with the EU to everyone’s understanding”.

OpEd
Kalman Mizsei*

Moldova has arrived to very important crossroads. As a result of many years of democratic life and a market economy, the large community of European democracies, based on shared values, is ready to make important steps to invite this small country to a closer integration with the world’s largest market and democratic space – the European Union. At the same time, Moldova’s historical colonial master is trying to frighten away its old colony from this important step that would bring so much benefit to who count most: the hard working average people of the Republic of Moldova. As a naked, unmistakable act of threat, Russia reintroduced a wine embargo overnight against Moldova and sent its Deputy Prime Minister to Chisinau with the rough message: if you don’t want to freeze during winter, do not sign an Association Agreement with the European Union! Some of the political forces in opposition have sided with the Russian actions against the best interests of the people of Moldova, in strong contrast to the situation in Ukraine and Georgia where there is a national consensus on behalf of European integration, the Association Agreement, energy integration, free trade agreement and visa free travel to the European Union’s countries. IPN started an interesting, useful debate and campaign to inform Moldovans about the changes that the Association Agreement will bring. This effort is laudable because so far even on the side of government such campaign has been missing.

Whereas it is understood that it is in Moldova’s best interest to have very good, even strategic relationship with Russia, it is also true that there are large economic, political and cultural advantages of the European integration over the alternative that Russia is asserting – first a Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and then, by the end of 2014 a deeper lock in the misleadingly named Eurasian Economic Union as it is similar only in its name, not in real content, to the European Union. First, what is important to understand is that deeper integration cannot happen simultaneously at the present time with both, the EU and Russia’s Eurasian model. Not because the EU demands such thing but because the customs union would prevent Moldova to have the necessary freedom to adjust its legal framework that a deep integration with the EU requires. As to the economic advantages, one needs to clearly see that the European Union is the world’s single largest economy, much larger than the United States of America; relative to the European Union, Russia and its trading block have a very small economy. As Igor Botan rightly pointed out in the IPN series, in addition to the difference in size, the EU markets demand higher quality goods and services that ultimately benefit Moldova’s economy whereas the lower quality Russian market would be detrimental to the Moldovan exporters. Second, the nature of the relationship is, and even more will be, fundamentally different. This is illustrated by the contrast of what and how the European Union is offering and what and how Russia is demanding. The EU may be said to be slow and complicated but it never will impose an arbitrary embargo overnight on Moldova.

The EU is offering with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement a full opening of its markets with only monitoring the flow of goods in sensitive sectors so that it can see if Moldova is exporting its own goods to the EU or perhaps the volumes are such that it can contain illegal re-exports. The EU is a Union of countries that are deeply committed to the sanctity of the rule-of-law. In fact, the core of this Union – and the reason for its unparalleled success of 6 decades – is its adherence to the rule-of-law. The nature of the so-called Eurasian Union cannot be more different and Russia has provided the perfect illustration by the coercive, arbitrary measures of banning a few times in the last years Moldovan wine. Particularly now that Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, it is legally bound to restrain from such measures. This is what the meaning is of being part of any such community of nations as the WTO. Not anyone can have the slightest doubt that these measures were exactly the opposite of what the rule-of the-law in international relations means: here the law was arbitrarily used for the purposes of political pressure. Being locked even deeper into this arrangement “customs union” with a party whose economy is 340 times bigger than that of Moldova and who is always willing to use its economic muscles for purposes of political subordination is a recipe for gradually losing Moldova’s hard-won independence. Russia is so energetic exactly because they see that a closer integration with the voluntary Union of free European nations would take further Moldova away from an involuntary subordination in the way it was historically.

This is the principal choice that Moldova is making; it is only the second question exactly how much economic growth the Agreement will produce. But its direct economic benefits, even by the most modest economic calculations, are significant, exceeding 5 per cent. However, these models, on the basis of which these numbers are stated, do not take into account the larger part of the benefits Moldova would get. A long term free trade agreement sends a powerful message to the industrial investors that it is worth investing into Moldova. Large European investments can make all the difference for modernizing Moldova’s industry and agrarian sector. If and when this materializes, the country will achieve leapfrog in economic growth as it has been the case in Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary and the other successful Central East European countries when their European integration prospects started to pull European investors.

For this, however, Moldova needs a few things – reforms that the European Union can encourage but it cannot implement instead of the state. The prevailing level of corruption in Moldova is a direct obstacle to the “good” investments that the country needs, as opposed to the kind of investments that have invited political controversy in the last months. Georgia has made very significant progress in state reform since 2004 – this should be studied and emulated in Moldova, of course taking into account the actual Moldovan realities. A country with such low governance capacities that Moldova at the present time still has, the more radical liberal reforms the country is able to accomplish the more quickly it can advance away from the position of the poorest European state. In this respect the EU’s technical assistance, honestly, should be more substantial than so far has been the case. The large and generous financial assistance of the Union is in sharp contrast to its less strong ability to provide the adequate technical assistance.

Besides the economic advantages, Moldova would gain an upgraded level of regularized political and foreign policy consultations from the European Union.

In terms of short term political advantages, the process of arriving to a visa-free situation gets most attention from the Moldovan public and thus from politicians than the free trade agreement. The perspective is that after the free trade agreement, perhaps as early as in April next year, the European Commission can initiate to the EU member states to offer visa free status to Moldova. Everybody is right asking why it takes so much time for the EU to give visa-free status, particularly in the special situation of Moldovans who can relatively easily apply for and get Romanian citizenship. To understand this, one needs to consider that countries of the European Union are a very attractive destination for a very large number of people from outside. Again the difference here is that the EU is an area of the rule-of-law, unlike some other destinations of people. As soon as the 28 members of the EU accept a liberalized regime, the Union has no capacity to narrow it down just on the basis of daily political convenience. Therefore it has been a hard job to convince particularly ministers of interior of the member states that they can open up to Moldovans. The chance is now within reach. Much of the technical preparations have been accomplished, such as the biometric passports, to pave the way to the visa-free status. But it remains important that Moldova shows the EU the picture of a normal democratic country. Here the responsibility is with both sides: the government has to engage the opposition but likewise, the opposition needs to remain responsible towards the core national interest of Moldova. When I was responsible for the European policies during the Moldovan crisis in 2009, my plea to both sides was to talk, negotiate and compromise. Moldova will be a sustained democracy when parties will believe that one lost election is not a loss of power … forever. It strikes me that talks over the national minimum consensus among political forces would be a perfectly good subject to reach sensible results on: what is the range of issues where no matter who is on power, there should be no rivalry from the opposition. And on this list European integration as well as defending the national interest in light of certain external pressures should be such issues. In Georgia, as we saw in an IPN interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, there is such minimum national consensus.

European integration is a crucial historical opportunity for Moldova. The lack of such alternative has caused the country to be so poor in European perspective as it unfortunately is. It would be quite unforgivable to miss now the chance. I call on different parts of the Moldovan elite, regardless of ethnic background, to agree on this.

*Kalman Mizsei served as European Union's Special Representative for the Republic of Moldova in 2007-2011. He still keeps a live interest in the developments in our country. Previously he served as UNDP Regional Director for Europe and CSI . Kalman Mizsei holds a PhD from the Budapest University of Economics.