MOLDOVA CRISIS TESTS EU
By Tony Barber in Brussels

FT
April 15 2009 18:37

The post-election crisis in Moldova is the latest test of the European
Union’s capacity to promote stability and prosperity in a clutch
of former Soviet republics situated between the EU’s eastern border
and Russia.

Tensions in some of these states, such as Georgia and Ukraine, have
been caused to a large extent by strained relations with their former
masters in Moscow.

But the political disturbances in Moldova pose a rather different
challenge for the EU. Although Russia exerts considerable influence
over the country, the troubles on this occasion involve a state,
Romania, that is a member not only of the 27-nation bloc but also
of Nato.

As a result, EU policymakers must tread a delicate path between
their desire to assist Moldova, which is not in the European and
transatlantic alliance systems but is in a worryingly unstable area
of eastern Europe, and the necessity of showing support for Romania,
a full partner and ally.

The EU’s commitment to collective solidarity among its member states
explains why it felt obliged to issue a statement last week calling
on Moldova, which has expelled Romania’s ambassador in Chisinau and
imposed a visa regime on Romanian visitors, to resume normal relations
with Bucharest.

The same principle is at work when the EU aligns itself with the Greek
Cypr iot-controlled government of Cyprus in preference to Turkey,
or with Slovenia in its maritime border dispute with Croatia. Even
if other EU countries may be critical of Greek Cypriot or Slovenian
policies privately, they recognise that they have to line up behind
their fellow member states in public.

This was illustrated by last week’s EU statement, in which the foreign
ministers of France, the Czech Republic and Sweden – representing
the EU’s past, present and future rotating presidencies – warned
Moldova that closer ties with the EU, though desirable, needed to be
"in accordance with European values and principles".

The ministers sent a subtly balanced message by taking the trouble
to state that they understood "the complexity of Moldovan-Romanian
relations".

The EU is acting cautiously in the Moldovan crisis partly because it
sets great store by a new policy initiative, known as the eastern
partnership, that covers an area which includes Moldova and is due
for its official launch at a summit in Prague next month.

The Czech Republic said on Wednesday that Mirek Topolanek, prime
minister, had discussed the crisis with Vladimir Voronin, Moldova’s
president, and would travel to Chisinau next Wednesday.

But Mr Topolanek’s authority as a voice of EU foreign policy has
been weakened by the collapse of his government last month and his
imminent departure from off ice, set for May 9.

The Prague summit will take place two days earlier and will bring
together leaders from the EU and the six states covered by the
eastern partnership – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova
and Ukraine.

The plan foresees the gradual construction of a free trade area between
the EU and the six, the relaxation of visa requirements for citizens of
the six travelling to the EU, and the allocation of â~B¬600m ($790.5m,
£527.7m) in aid to the six between now and 2013.

There is, however, no explicit or implicit promise of eventual EU
membership for the six, and Mr Voronin himself recently dismissed
the amount of aid on offer as mere "candy".