While the 27 States that make up the European Union have kept 5 Balkan
States (Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Serbia) and aquasi-State, Kosovo, on a waiting list for decades, waiting for the
requirements to be admitted to the Union to mature, they do not care
about the shortcomings that they possess and prepare a privileged path
to accession for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, which do not have and are
far from having matured the required requirements. Obviously, the
reasons are of a political-strategic nature, but they operate a twisting
of the Treaties establishing the Union, risking distorting its
characteristics, especially with reference to the community aequis.
There is no doubt that the commitments made in the euphoria of adopting
actions to support Ukraine will deliver to the Union a country in a
comatose state, after a disastrous military defeat, now inevitable,
completely destroyed and in need of reconstruction and, what is more
serious, poisoned in its democratic institutions, which have never
actually taken off, affected by religious persecution, deprivation of
rights, and the devastating consequences of a war. The European
countries will have to bear the costs of its reconstruction, spreading
them across their meager budgets and taking resources away from their
citizens. All this in the interest of well-identified economic groups
and consortia of companies that will try to divide up the spoils of a
completely hypothetical and in any case problematic reconstruction, of a
destroyed country, without a demographic future, problematic from the
point of view of its social composition. Moldova and Georgia will not be
in better conditions if the accession process of these countries were to
be completed quickly, although to understand what could happen it is
worth examining the specific situation of the two countries that present
problems that are not very different from each other.
Moldova's accession
Even though the government of Moldova requested accession to the EU in
March 2022, in reality the free movement of Moldovan citizens in
European countries began some time ago, facilitated by the fact that,
especially for those who come from Bessarabia, a Romanian-speaking
region, this was facilitated by the Romanian government issuing dual
passports. Furthermore, the country has long been open to Western
investments and to the relocation of activities, especially
manufacturing, by companies, including Italian ones, that have their
parent companies in the EU. The country is officially bilingual and
Russian and Romanian are spoken there, so much so that the laws and
official documents are drawn up in both languages; two Orthodox Churches
operate within it, one linked to the Patriarchate of Moscow, but largely
autonomous, the other to the Romanian Orthodox Church. This particular
configuration of the country is reflected in the social structure and
territorial layout, so much so that an autonomous authority coexists
with the Moldovan State that manages the region of Transnistria, which
in fact self-administers and considers itself a legacy of the Soviet
State, to the point of officially preserving its coat of arms and
anthem. The great poverty of the country has forced Moldovan citizens to
emigrate in two directions: the traditional one towards the Russian
Federation, supported by linguistic and cultural affinity and family
ties dating back to Moldova's common membership in the Soviet Union,
estimated at around 500,000 people, and an emigration of equal size
towards the West, especially towards the EU, which occurred starting in
1991, after the collapse of the USSR. However, while the Moldovan
government has organized polling stations in many European cities where
migrants could cast their votes, the same has not happened in Russia,
where only two polling stations were set up in Moscow, to which only
10,000 ballots were sent. The country went to the polls on October 20 to
elect the President of the Republic. The first round narrowed the
competition to two candidates, the outgoing president Maya Sandu and
Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor supported by the pro-Russian
socialists. In the interlude between the first and second rounds, voters
were called to decide on the constitutional referendum for the inclusion
in the Constitution of the country's possible accession to the EU.
The victory of the "yes" was narrow, thanks to a few thousand votes,
while journalistic investigations have revealed attempts to influence
and condition the vote with a disinformation campaign carried out by
both sides. In particular, while the president is accused of having
steered the vote of the Moldovan diaspora in the West, those against EU
membership would have benefited from the support of Transnistrian
residents, transported on buses made available by pro-Russian oligarchs
to vote, taking advantage of the fact that, despite living in the
separatist region, they are Moldovan citizens and retain the right to vote.
The second round of the presidential elections took place on Sunday 3
November, which was won by Maya Sandu with 55% of the votes, after the
counting of the ballots had favored the opposition candidate until the
very end. The reversal of the result occurred with the counting of the
ballots in the capital Chisinau and the arrival of the votes of the
Moldovan diaspora in the West.
The trend of the vote shows how the country, which has two and a half
million inhabitants, is divided not only because of the different
orientations that characterize the diasporas to the East and the West,
but also because of its particular position on the border of the Union,
contested between the economic and cultural ties with Romania, and
through it, with Europe and instead the belonging to the Slavic world
and relations with Russia. Looking at the vote, there is a polarization
between the inhabitants of Bessarabia and those of the capital, oriented
towards the West, while the countryside and the outskirts of the country
look to the Russian world, as a political and cultural point of
reference, as well as religious. The election result was welcomed by
Ursula von der Leyen, while hiding that the country does not possess the
requirements, even minimal, to join the Union, neither with regard to
its legislation nor the fiscal and economic structures that allow its
integration into the productive and political-institutional fabric. Its
entry would also require a significant use of resources to allow it to
take off, even if it would offer the Union an additional territory in
which to continue to relocate production activities, thus further
worsening the employment and production crisis of the member countries.
Georgian accession
Also in Georgia, the vote was with an eye on Europe, but on 27 October
the populist and pro-Russian party Georgian Dream, which has governed
the country for 12 years now, won the legislative elections obtaining
almost 54% of the votes. The pro-European opposition coalition, which
includes four parties, led by the President of the Republic, Salome
Zourabichvili, collected approximately 37% of the votes. In her opinion,
the outcome of the vote is the result of a "Russian special operation",
aimed at distancing Georgia from Europe and, contesting the outcome of
the vote, the President invited citizens to take to the streets, finding
a hearing mainly in the capital Tbilisi, where most of those calling for
the country's accession to the Union are concentrated. In Georgia too,
the outcome of the vote demonstrates the existence of a deep rift in the
country between the city and the countryside, as demonstrated by the
repeated demonstrations in the capital in favor of the country's
accession to the EU, a position that certainly harms Russia's
geostrategic interests, but finds support in the suburbs. Several
interested observers, including the OSCE, the EU and NATO, have argued
that the vote would have been characterized by pressure and violations,
as well as financial abuse and cases of vote-buying. Paradoxically, the
Georgian Dream party also supports the country's entry into the EU but
by 2030, given that only last December the EU granted Tbilisi the status
of candidate country and that in the past the country expressed 80%
support for accession. However, Georgian Dream seems to be working in
the opposite direction considering that it proposed and passed a law
that aims to consider foreign NGOs operating in the country as agents of
other States, following the Russian law on the matter and including
among these organizations that support the LGBT community, inducing the
EU to freeze Georgian accession for "democratic backsliding" and
violation of the community aequis.
It must be said that the Georgian case demonstrates the inconsistency
and opportunism of the EU, which has not made similar observations to
Ukraine, although the latter, much more than Georgia, has adopted
measures that are completely in contrast with the community aequis,
starting with the clear violation of religious freedom.
There is no doubt, however, that today Georgia is also a country divided
between cities and countryside. The differences between urban and rural
areas are a fact and it would be good for politicians in Brussels to
take this into account because this division risks pushing the country
towards civil war. The revitalization of the accession process
necessarily passes through a relaunch of the democratic process of
growth of the country that has also characterized it in the past, if we
do not want accession to be experienced by a part of the population as
an annexation and detachment from cultural roots that are significantly
present in the country.
Furthermore, both in the case of Moldova and Georgia, a tumultuous
growth of the EU and its rapid expansion - as the history of the Union
demonstrates - occurs at the expense of cohesion and does not help that
necessary process of reviewing the decision-making mechanisms that,
especially in this institutional political phase, would be necessary.
The more the Union is composite and experiences different phases of
coordination of the systems of the States that are part of it, the
weaker it is and incapable of having a voice in the international scene.
The Editorial Staff
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/11/23/moldova-e-georgialappetito-vien-mangiando/
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