REYKJAVIK: President Maia Sandu said on Thursday that Moldova wanted EU membership as soon as possible as protection against Russia, voicing hopes for a decision to start talks in the coming months.
The tiny nation of 2.6 million people, nestled between European Union (EU) neighbor Romania and war-torn Ukraine, would hold its first major summit of wider Europe on 1 June.
That conference of the European Political Community – a forum established last year that brings together heads of state and government of all 27 EU nations with twenty neighbors of the bloc – would be an opportunity for Moldova to burnish its membership credentials.
For Sandu, the bloc’s membership is the only guarantee against becoming the next target of Russia.
Moldova’s breakaway region
Moldova, a former Soviet republic, already has a breakaway area, Transnistria, where Moscow has stationed a small number of soldiers.
Sandu said that of course, nothing compares to what was going on in Ukraine, but Moldova could see the dangers and it believed that it could save its democracy only as part of the bloc.
She said that they believed that Russia would continue to be a huge source of instability for the years to come and the government needed to protect its country.
The 50-year-old President Sandu, in office since 2020, in February blamed Moscow for fomenting a coup in a bid to seize power in Moldova.
The leader called for Moldovans – whom polls are overwhelmingly supported joining the EU– to organize a pro-EU rally on Sunday.
She said that the Ukraine war made things crystal clear. So, it is black and white what the free world means, and what the authoritarian world means, for all of us.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine next door suddenly increased up the prospect of EU membership for Moldova and Ukraine.
Both applied last year to join the group and in June 2022 became candidate nations, along with Georgia. –AFP
