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”.
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After the association with the EU, Moldova will withdraw from the post-Soviet institutional, relational and even values system and will enter the institutional and relational dimension of the European Union, where the standards are different. Political analyst Ion Tabarta believes that Russia will try to have with Moldova and Ukraine the same type of relations as with other European states. It’s not excluded that it will impose a visa regime though the calculation here will be very meticulous and the procedure can last long or the conditions of registering and staying on Russia’s territory for Moldovans may change. Changes will also appear in the economic relations. Additional taxes may be put on imports and exports.
The analyst gave as example the relations of the Baltic States with Russia, which were marked by ethnical, energy and freight transportation problems. The relations between these states and Russia didn’t improve after they joined the EU, even if an improvement is now seen in the trade sector. The citizens of the Baltic countries need visas to enter Russia, but benefit from a simplified procedure for obtaining them. The citizens of the other EU member states also need visas to travel to Russia.
Ion Tabarta considers that the distance between Chisinau and Tiraspol will lengthen after Moldova associates itself with the EU. “Russia will make effort to transform the Transnistrian region into a kind of Kaliningrad 2. Unofficially, it will be an unrecognized Russian territory. The presence of the Russian Federation in the region will grow,” he stated.
As to the possibility of settling the Transnistrian conflict after Moldova’s association with the EU, the analyst said Russia must have an inclination, but, judging by the latest actions, such an inclination will not appear soon and it’s not clear if the EU will be able or not to become actively involved in the format of the talks and in the settlement process.
During a visit paid by Moldovan Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman to Moscow in summer, her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov said that Russia respects Moldova’s choice to join the EU, but is waiting for the Moldovan officials at talks to consider the future relations in the energy and migration sectors. The Russian official said all the aspects concerning cooperation in the energy sector will have to be discussed, given the energy packages imposed by the EU on Moldova. The Russian side wants to know how the regulations imposed on Moldova in the economic spheres will influence the bilateral relations between the two states.
Mariana Galben, IPN
