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| Dionis Cenuşa, Senior Contributor | |
The electoral exercises in Moldova (20 October) and Georgia (26 October) constituted a stress test for the EU in the countries that, along with Ukraine, have deeper relations with Brussels in Eastern Europe. It was the first time since the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine that sympathies towards Brussels were tested through the elections in Moldova and Georgia. Although polls show support varying between 52% and 54% in Moldova and over 80% in Georgia, the Moldovan referendum on the "constitutionalisation" of European integration and the parliamentary elections in Georgia have shown that the EU is having difficulty in influencing public perception in these countries.
The announcement of future financial aid of 1.8 billion euros, made by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in Chisinau a few days before the elections, was insufficient for Moldovan voters to support the referendum with an absolute vote. Of the total electorate, approximately 25% voted in favour and the remaining 75% voted against, boycotted or did not vote. However, the fate of the referendum was determined by the diaspora in the West, with whose help the referendum obtained 50.4% of the votes, with a turnout rate of 49%. In Georgia, although the EU has warned that the fate of the country as a candidate for EU accession will depend on how the elections are held, the government conducted the elections with various irregularities exposed by the opposition (vote buying, repeated voting, etc.). Despite EU warnings, many Georgian voters supported the ruling party ("Georgian Dream"), which won around 54% of the vote. However, in both the Moldovan referendum and the Georgian legislative elections, the voting process was marred by hybrid vote-buying operations in Moldova and vote-rigging techniques pointed out by the Georgian opposition.
These electoral exercises are an opportunity for the EU to identify the reasons for its influence in a credibility crisis. On the one hand, the situation in Moldova shows that EU-related financial advantages have less impact than expected on achieving a massively positive result in the referendum or a victory for Maia Sandu in the first round. Although Moldovans appreciate EU assistance, their approach also includes demands on pro-EU forces in the country regarding the quality of governance. On the other hand, the events in Georgia call into question the EU’s ability to influence the behaviour of ruling elites, who underestimate the EU’s instruments of conditionality and sanctions. Access to non-Western financial resources and external legitimacy (including Turkey, China and Russia) is used by Georgian leaders as a way to escape or reduce personal and political risks that may result from possible European sanctions.
Post-election scenarios for Georgia
The elections, marked by several cases of irregularities, place the EU in a strategic dilemma regarding this South Caucasus country. Continuing dialogue with the ruling party in Georgia, which, according to the election results, will continue to dominate the decision-making process in the country, will discredit the image of the EU. Pro-European opposition forces in Georgia are counting on the West's failure to recognise the election results in order to exert external pressure and repeat the elections. At the same time, the EU understands that refusal to cooperate with the Georgian authorities will lead to the preservation of relations in a frozen state. In the absence of the EU, other regional and global geopolitical players will try to strengthen their positions in Georgia, such as Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, etc. At the same time, if the EU does not take an appropriate attitude to the events in Georgia, its credibility will be questioned in other candidate countries.
Hungary's involvement in the external legitimisation of the election results in Georgia is another blow to the country's image. In addition to not consulting Brussels during his visit to Moscow, dedicated to discussing "peace solutions" without Ukraine, Viktor Orban is preparing to visit Georgia to support the government. Taking advantage of Hungary's rotating EU presidency, Orban wants to convince Georgian public opinion that the EU recognises the results. This could have been used by the "Georgian Dream" to demobilise protests in the territory, where it won the majority of votes. There is a climate of post-election protests by the opposition, and the leader who represents the voice of the opposition is President Salome Zurabishvili, who enjoys credibility in European capitals.
Non-recognition of the election results by the opposition, but even more so by the EU, could lead the country into a new political crisis. There are two main scenarios that can develop, depending on the actions of the opposition and the support of the EU. The “Belarusian” scenario after the 2020 parliamentary elections, in which Alexander Lukashenko was fraudulently re-elected, can develop if the Georgian authorities resort to violence against post-election protests. In this case, political violence can lead to EU sanctions against elites (including Bidzina Ivanishvili), cancellation of the visa-free regime and suspension of trade benefits under the 2014 Association Agreement. The most radical measure the EU can take is to withdraw its candidate status, which is currently frozen.
A second scenario that should not be ruled out is that of the “Armenian” (“velvet revolution”), when protests led by Nikol Pashinyan overthrow Serge Sargsyan, who was trying to hold on to power in 2018, after 11 years in power as president and prime minister. This scenario developed in a peaceful manner and not in conditions of mass polarization such as that which persists in Georgia. The Georgian authorities will perceive this scenario as a “Euromaidan,” which the ruling party treats as a dangerous phenomenon of Western intervention. Such a scenario requires the mobilization of the opposition on the one hand and the support of the EU and the United States on the other. But the situation in Georgia involves the interests of regional actors, such as Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. The first two see no problem in perpetuating the current government, which is particularly convenient for Russia, since the Georgian government participates in discrediting the EU’s influence in the region. Azerbaijan has already supported the election results and criticised the “Rose Revolution” in the past, perceived as a risk to its internal political stability.
The dilemma for the EU is to support a pro-EU democratic change in Georgia without generating the “Belarusian” scenario. This task is complicated because Hungary, Russia and Azerbaijan support the election results. If China joins in legitimising the elections, the EU will be isolated, especially if the US hesitates due to its own concerns about the presidential elections on 5 November, after which Donald Trump wants to return to power.
Signs of concern for the EU in Moldova
49% of Moldovan citizens went to the polls to participate in the referendum and 50.4% voted in favour of the Constitution to introduce European integration as an irreversible vector of foreign policy (CEC.md, October 2024). Thus, around 25% of voters opted for the referendum, initiated on the basis of Maia Sandu's proposal made at the end of 2023. The rest of the voters, representing around 75%, voted against it, boycotted it or were absent.
According to the latest polls conducted before the referendum (BOP, Oct 2024), 54.5% of respondents were in favour of the EU. In total, 47.9% of respondents announced that they would vote in favour in the referendum on the "Europeanisation" of the Constitution and 23% indicated that they would vote against. The referendum on 20 October revealed a worse picture that could have repercussions on the EU's image in Moldova. The actual number of those who voted against the referendum was twice as high (49%) compared to those identified in the polls (23%).
One of the possible explanations is that political networks linked to Ilan Şor, deemed to be criminal by Moldovan security forces, managed to use illegal financial resources, transferred through the Russian banking system, to influence a large number of votes. Initially, official sources in Chisinau indicated the figure of 130,000, then Maia Sandu almost doubled it to 300,000. Contrary to these contradictory data presented by Moldovan security services and the country's acting president, Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu announced that estimates of fraudulent votes would amount to 220,000.
Shor and Moscow's attempt to influence the direction of the vote in the referendum is indisputable. Police claimed that Sor transferred up to $24 million to virtual accounts of Moldovans in the Russian banking system in October. However, questions are being raised about the rest of the voters who did not support the referendum. If we assume that 300,000 are fraudulent votes (according to Sandu's claims), then that is less than half of the total of 738,737 people who voted "against." In other words, it is almost 439,000 Moldovans who opposed the referendum. A part of this group has completely different geopolitical views, does not adhere to the Eurasian integration openly promoted only by Shor's supporters, but belongs to the idea of a balanced foreign policy. Another part of the 400,000 citizens who are not suspected of having voted according to the coordinates of Șor (300,000 people out of a total of 738,737 who voted "no" in the referendum) voted against, but not so much against the referendum as against the style of government of Maia Sandu and her party (Party of Action and Solidarity).
Worrying signals for the EU
The referendum, in which 50.4% of voters (25% of the total electorate) voted in favour, has shown that, although polls indicate that 54% of the population sympathises with the EU, at least 4% are willing to penalise the EU for the quality of governance in the country. In other words, this referendum is a signal to Brussels, which must get to the heart of the negative vote, beyond Russian interference, in order to avoid an image blow similar to that of 2013-2014. In light of several image crises of the then pro-EU governments in Chisinau, including crimes in the banking sector with losses of around 15% of Moldovan GDP, public support for the EU has fallen sharply from 50.3% in April 2013 to 43.9% in November 2014 and 39.5% in April 2015.
These data are worrying for pro-EU forces in Moldova, who find themselves in an uncomfortable dilemma.
On the one hand, pro-EU forces other than Maia Sandu's party (PAS) have been marginalised on Moldovan political and media platforms. The co-optation of civil society and media elites by PAS and Sandu has placed the other parties (Bloc "Împreună", CUB, PLDM, etc.) in artificial opposition to the government and the pro-EU vector itself. They have been portrayed in Brussels as unreliable and weak. The co-optation of different civil society representatives and media sources has diverted attention from the governing style of the ruling party to the monitoring and stigmatisation of opposition activity, both pro-Russian and pro-EU.
On the other hand, the devaluation of pro-EU political alternatives by Sandu and the ruling party has created a huge dependency on the EU by the current government in Chisinau. The EU is therefore reluctant to criticise failures in the reform process or abuses in the act of governing in Moldova. Tolerance towards the lack of good governance in Chisinau is exaggerated and exploited by Russian propaganda, which attributes responsibility for the actions of Moldovan leaders to Brussels' fear of holding accountable the current elite of Moldovan politics.
Despite having the sad example of 2013-2014 before it, the EU is betting on Maia Sandu's re-election in the second round, taking the risks associated with the image damage that Sandu's defeat by Alexandru Stoianoglo could represent.
Although Brussels has little time to change its strategy regarding the engagement with the government in Chisinau, after the second round the EU institutions will have to carry out an in-depth and frank analysis of the way they have handled the "Moldovan dossier" in order to understand the geopolitical costs of maintaining the current strategy in view of the parliamentary elections in 2025. The miscalculations of the EU will be seized by Russia.
In lieu of conclusion
As the elections in Georgia and the referendum in Moldova have shown, the positive (money) and negative (sanctions) conditions on which the EU relies to exert its influence are losing their effectiveness and must be revised if the EU does not want to lose geopolitical ground in Europe due to Russia's defeat.
The results of the second round of the presidential elections in Moldova on 3 November will reveal whether the EU manages to maintain its position or whether the situation will drift into a more uncertain direction. In any case, the political crisis in Georgia will remain the biggest challenge for the EU among the candidate countries. If the current status quo in Georgia is not resolved, i.e. not accepted, another Serbia may emerge in its political neighbourhood, with a hedging foreign policy, balancing between the EU and Russia and China.
Areas of research: European Neighborhood Policy, EU-Moldova relationship, EU's foreign policy and Russia, migration and energy security.
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