Despite all the threats that the war in Ukraine has brought to our country, it has had a less obvious effect as well: Chisinau and Tiraspol have shown that, in crisis situations, they can negotiate effectively and reach complicated agreements, remarked Alexandru Flenchea, former Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration, during an IPN debate titled “Candidate status in times of cumulative crises”.
“In record time, under the pressure of very real risks, some even forced, related to a possible disruption of electricity supplies, Chisinau and Tiraspol reached very quickly some agreements that seem to satisfy both parties. At the same time, we must understand that these agreements are provisional (...), being regulated by the decisions of the Commission for Exceptional Situations”, said the former official, now director of the Initiative for Peace NGO.
According to the expert, the complex of crises that Moldova is now facing opens up a number of opportunities. “We need to redefine ourselves as a country and understand what we can offer our neighbors, what we can offer Europe, what we can sell. And I’m not talking about sectors of the economy or concrete companies, so not in the sense of sales of wine, walnut kernels or IT services. What can we offer as a country, as a political entity and a regional player? For example, what does Switzerland sell to the world? Switzerland sells the security of money (...) Singapore, which is just a piece of a peninsula, what does it sell? It has become a financial center for the whole of Southeast Asia. Denmark, a country with a population only slightly larger than Moldova, without significant natural resources, what does it sell? Know-how in the field of renewable energy, know-how related to environmental protection”, exemplified Alexandru Flenchea, arriving at the question:
“So what can we sell? I guess that since the first years of independence, the idea has taken root that, apart from human potential, we have nothing to offer but our geographical position between the East and the West. Well, three decades of independence have shown that it is not so easy to sell your geographical position, especially since, in a globalized world, geography is starting to lose its value. And even more so, Transnistria, as a separatist entity, reduced our geographical position to zero in terms of transit potential, with closed bridges, seized railways and greedy Transnistrian customs officers. Practically, all the transit bypassed us”, declared the former deputy prime minister for reintegration. But, according to him, the war in Ukraine has returned this opportunity to us, more or less: “Moldova’s railway infrastructure and the Port of Giurgiulesti suddenly became much more important for the whole region than they were before the war”.
However, Alexandru Flenchea believes that, beyond that, there is nothing else to be gained from our geographical position. “So, we must make the effort to reinvent ourselves and offer solutions (...) Anticipating the question - what do we do with the Transnistrian conflict? - in the context of our ambitions to join the European Union one day, it is obvious that, having an unresolved conflict and Russian troops within our territory, no one is going to let us in. So, we have to come up with solutions. We shouldn’t wait for someone to give them to us. Let’s formulate them ourselves. How can we contribute to greater security in this region of Europe? Obviously, not with troops, not with military might (...) We do not have the resources to make a difference for the EU, either. Instead, we have a rich experience with some successes in the field of regional security, negotiations and conflict resolution”, added the expert.
On a different subject, Alexandru Flenchea believes that Moldova is no longer facing a refugee crisis, which he says ended when the number of Ukrainians in our country began to decline. Instead, according to him, Moldova is at the beginning of a social, economic and potentially political crisis, related to the fact that the status of the 70,000 Ukrainian refugees is not sufficiently regulated. The expert thinks that the authorities need to do more to facilitate the employment of refugees, and a clearer legal status would provide more security for them and their employers. “Based on the international conventions we have ratified, Moldova as a state has a duty to offer them a minimum set of guarantees, public services, health, education, inclusion”, added Alexandru Flenchea, ex-deputy prime minister for reintegration, director of the Initiative for Peace NGO.
The debate was the 256th installment of the “Political Culture” Series, run by IPN with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
