The road to Europe for Georgia and Moldova: No diversion via Moscow

Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine spent decades trying to persuade the EU to offer them the prospect of membership. It took Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 for them to get the EU to agree. But Georgia and Moldova are at risk of losing their opportunity again – though for very different reasons. The EU should stop being so squeamish about supporting pro-Western forces in both countries: now is the time for the ‘geopolitical Commission’, proclaimed by Ursula von der Leyen five years ago, to start behaving geopolitically.

Moldova has just voted by the thinnest of margins to enshrine the goal of EU integration in its constitution, but its pro-European president, Maia Sandu, faces a tricky second round in presidential elections, facing Aleksandr Stoianoglo, a candidate who claims to support a multi-vector foreign policy, balanced between the EU, Russia, the US and China. Stoianoglo opposed the pro-EU constitutional amendment. Whether or not his candidacy was a Russian project, he seems to be a candidate behind whom all Moldova’s pro-Russian forces can rally, in an environment of Russian disinformation and electoral malpractice.

Georgia’s parliamentary elections pit the increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian ruling party, ‘Georgian Dream’, against several pro-EU parties, with both government and opposition seeking to persuade the strongly pro-Western population that they are the ones best placed to take the country into the EU. Georgia’s president, Salomé Zourabichvili, who was elected with the support of Georgian Dream but has become a firm opponent of the party’s pro-Russian turn, has had only partial success in persuading the opposition to work together.

If either Georgia or Moldova slipped into Russia’s orbit after these elections, it would be a setback for EU and wider Western interests in the Black Sea region. A Moscow-aligned Moldova would potentially offer Russia a base from which to attack south-western Ukraine’s grain exporting ports. Georgia is also strategically located: the pipeline through which Azerbaijan exports gas to Turkey and beyond – an increasingly important alternative source of supply for some parts of Europe that used to rely on Russian gas – runs through Georgia; the country is part of the ‘middle corridor’ linking Europe to China via Central Asia, bypassing Russia; and it offers Armenia, which is trying to reduce its dependency on Russia and to re-align itself away from Moscow and towards the EU, its only outlet to the West (given the state of Armenia’s relations with Turkey).

Moreover, if Georgia or Moldova gave up their efforts to join the EU, it would reinforce the impression that EU membership was no longer the transformative prospect that it once was. In the years after the Cold War, the offer of eventual accession to the EU was enough to persuade the Union’s neighbours to adopt EU values and become stable, prosperous democracies.  For Putin, more pro-Russian governments in Georgia, Moldova or both would be a significant prize – not as important to him as subjugating Ukraine, but another sign that he was continuing to ‘make Russia great again’ and to reverse Western encroachment on Russia’s former imperial possessions.

The EU never likes to be accused of interfering in the internal affairs of its partners. But it cannot act as a neutral observer in Georgia or Moldova – it is in a battle for influence that it needs to win. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Moldova ten days before the vote and promised EU investments of €1.8 billion over three years, suggesting that she also has seen the importance of ensuring that Moldova’s future course lies westward, not eastward. But in seeking to ensure that the two candidate countries are not drawn into Russia’s orbit, the EU needs to tailor its action to the differing situations in Georgia and Moldova, and ensure that in fighting against Russian influence, it hits the right targets.

In Georgia, suspending visa liberalisation – a possibility mentioned to Politico by a European Commission official – would make life harder for ordinary Georgians; it would not send the message that the EU had their best interests at heart. Georgians need to know that the EU will work with any democratically elected Georgian government that is genuinely committed to taking the steps needed to ensure that Georgia can fulfil the requirements of EU membership. The Union needs to make equally clear that a government that promises to take Georgia into Europe while acting in ways incompatible with EU values will get no rewards from the Union. At the same time, the EU should continue to work with pro-European forces in Georgia – political parties, civil society and the president – to get out the message that Georgia’s future lies with the West, not with Russia.

In the time available, the EU cannot do much to counter the effect on the election outcome of GD’s ability to bribe or coerce voters, particularly those in government or government-subsidised jobs. But it can make clear that it will follow the US example of imposing sanctions on anyone responsible for undermining democracy in Georgia.

Because Georgia faces a genuine security threat from Russia, the EU should reverse the decision taken in the summer to cut aid to the Georgian armed forces, and instead offer to beef up the unarmed EU Monitoring Mission that operates around the Russian-occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, replacing it with a more capable military force, which could better deter further Russian moves into Georgian territory.

In Moldova, assuming that Sandu is re-elected, the EU needs to work on supporting pro-Western forces in the run-up to parliamentary elections next year. Given the number of Moldovans outside the country, and the fact that their votes were the difference between success and failure in the referendum on the EU, it would be worth working with the Moldovan government to ensure that the diaspora has access to information and is encouraged to vote.

Within Moldova, the EU needs a communications strategy that emphasises the advantages that the process of integration with the EU can offer, even before full membership (such as access to the EU’s single payments area, mentioned by von der Leyen as a way for the Union to help Moldova’s businesses). In other words, the EU needs to step up its public diplomacy effort, including in Russian. It needs to challenge Russian narratives among parts of the population that still rely on Moscow for most of their information. The EU should also take advantage of the current isolation from Moscow of the separatist region of Transnistria to explore with the Moldovan government and ultimately with the Transnistrians whether it is possible to bring about reunification on acceptable terms, without entrenching Russian political influence in the rest of Moldova. Transnistria is already benefitting from the EU’s Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with Moldova.

Moldova also needs security assistance – both for its armed forces, which are small and under-equipped, and for its law enforcement and intelligence bodies, which need more capacity to identify and deal with Russian information operations, illicit financing of political actors and other hybrid attacks on Moldova. The Union set up the EU Partnership Mission in the Republic of Moldova in mid-2023 to increase Moldova’s resilience in the face of hybrid attacks, disinformation and the like, but the extent of Russian interference this year shows that it needs to be better resourced.

Putin is seeking to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty by force of arms, and the West has responded with considerable (if still inadequate) military and economic assistance. Putin is using more subtle methods to increase Russia’s sway over Georgia and Moldova, but that does not mean that the EU can afford to ignore what he is doing. Von der Leyen came into office in 2019 proclaiming that she would lead a ‘geopolitical Commission’. Five years later, Russia is seeking to ensure that it, not the EU, becomes the dominant power in Eastern Europe. The peoples of the countries concerned deserve better than to fall under the colonial yoke of Moscow again. The EU needs to show both its attractive power, as a political, economic and social model that Georgians and Moldovans should want to be part of; and its ability to beat back Russia’s mixture of bribery, coercion and political manipulation.

Ian Bond is deputy director of the Centre for European Reform.