Moldova’s Continual Battle with Corruption and the Impact on EU Accession Journey

In a pivotal election, Moldova’s leadership reaffirmed its European trajectory, yet the vote exposed the enduring influence of external actors and internal vulnerabilities. While citizen engagement, especially from the diaspora, strengthened pro-EU forces, deep-rooted corruption and regional divisions highlight the fragility of the country’s democratic institutions and the challenges ahead for its EU aspirations.

Maia Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) managed to fend off another round of elections in September 2025, allowing her to continue to steer Moldova closer towards a future within the EU. Media sources such as Reutersdescribed this victory as a “setback for Russia” (Peleschuck and Tanas, 2025), with claims of election interference dominating electoral discourse. The electoral commission played a crucial role in combating this threat by taking decisive action barring the ‘Heart of Moldova’ party from the vote due to claims of illegal financial funding, following the Chișinău Court of Appeals’ decision (Blackburn, Euronews, 2025). Overall, enough has been done to manage another challenging election. However, the capability to tackle corruption, being a critical condition for European membership, means the discourse continues to act as a hurdle against its own membership campaign.

Historical precedent

On 24 October 2024, Moldova voted to enshrine the goal of European accession into their constitution through a referendum alongside presidential elections. This inclusion of a constitutional directive has made it the most critical assessment of Moldovan sentiment to date, because it shored up the threat of future interference by governments. Furthermore, in the backdrop of international tensions opening the door to candidate status, there was a symbolic utility in highlighting a desire to join the European Union.

The referendum demonstrated remarkable resilience to electoral influence. Sandu was able to achieve re-election with a strong expat representation and achieve a 0.7% majority in her mandate for European integration. With a slim majority, which may create future challenges for its legitimacy, the result was a surprising signal that judicial reforms and new institutions were having a positive impact on tackling corruption within the country. However, 130,000 citizens allegedly “received a total of $15 million from Shor in exchange for voting ‘no’” during this referendum in 2024 (Lovosky et al., 2024). This was noticed by key actors and also reveals an important aspect of a corruption strategy, which is visible destabilisation.

With “structural weaknesses leaving it [Moldova] exposed” (Brender, 2025), interference through bribery and online misinformation may have actually succeeded in its role of undermining commitment to European membership, because the mere presence of corruption is likely to stall progress with accession due to the rigorous standards requiring strong institutions in chapters 22–24. This has been one of the major concerns with the initiation of talks with Moldova towards EU membership from the beginning. By creating these structural challenges that demonstrate the fragility of institutions, a stalled accession process can be damaging to pro-European sentiment, as the barriers to entry may be deemed too high or impossible to overcome. In this way, interference becomes harmful because of its very presence, and it therefore makes sense for this strategy to have resurfaced in 2025.

Geopolitically motivated interference

Geopolitical discourse places Moldova as a key border of the Ukraine conflict and provides another reason for election interference. Blewitt-Mundy highlights a geostrategic incentive where “A pro-Russian administration in Chisinau would afford Moscow a springboard to launch attacks on Ukrainian territory from the southwest” (Blewett-Mundy, 2025). Moldova not being part of NATO, with Russian also being a major language, and its geographical location all make it an attractive gateway into Europe, with a population that could easily move back towards Russian reliance. However, while the idea of a geographical barrier to central Ukraine is interesting, there are challenges due to the fact that Romania strongly supported Moldova’s accession. Discussions of unification with Romania on the one hand, and Russian presence in Transnistria on the other, highlight an immense level of diversity of Moldovan identity, complicating this explanation.

The 2025 election

The 2025 election results highlight two narratives within Moldova. The first is that of a surprisingly united expat population who appear to have been sold on the benefits of EU membership (with 119,557 PAS votes split between Italy, Germany, and Romania alone) (Comisia Electorală Centrală, 2025), and the second is a strong pro-Russian bloc within the nation that is enhanced with Transnistrians looking for independence and tying themselves with Russians. In 2006, 95 percent of Transnistrians “expressed in an internationally unrecognised referendum that they wanted to join Russia” (Place, 2024), and this support continues into 2025. This is significant because it shows the depth of political cleavages, which are historically significant. This makes identifying corruption challenging through election results.

While the PAS achieved 50.2% of the total vote share, Figure 1 shows the emergence of the Blocul Patriotic within Moldova. This group of parties is pro-Socialist/Communist and is therefore naturally more likely to display Russophilia. While much of this support appears to be concentrated within Transnistria and some bordering regions, there is a smaller distinction within Moldova than with expats. This may be because of the presence of a previous president within one of the parties, but also may be because of support for more socialist tendencies. It could also be a signal that voter corruption is more prevalent than what is reported, but there is insufficient evidence to draw this conclusion purely from electoral data.

Another interesting emergence is that of the PPDA, a pro-Romanian unification party, along with Alternative, which also fosters pro-European attitudes, becoming more prevalent than Partidul Nostru. However, the role of the expat has been the most dominant story from the data. External voters demonstrate a proud nation that appears to see the benefit in European membership, with 79% supporting the incumbent government. This is important for the EU to recognise because it demonstrates that expats can be a powerful influence in fostering relations between the bloc and potential candidate nations.

To conclude, while it is important to fend off threats of corruption, the greater challenge to Moldova is that the very presence of these issues is a monumental challenge. This is because the EU is unlikely to display leniency for these issues when membership chapters are heavily built on strong institutions. This makes it difficult for progress, because corruption being a major talking point of an election brings it into much greater consideration. Moldova must therefore continue to build resilience against this threat. “Given Moldova’s limited resources, external assistance from the EU and other democratic allies is crucial in bolstering electoral integrity” (Rosca & Ciobanu, 2025, p.195). However, Moldova’s anti-corruption institutions also need to get stronger with the Moldovan people’s backing, in order to try to stamp out this issue to progress within the EU. This process is likely to take years.

 Bibliography 

• Blewett-Mundy, H. (2025) ‘Decoupling and fastracking Moldova’s EU accession ahead of Ukraine could work’, EUobserver, 27 May. Available at: https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar6dc6f166
• Blackburn, G. (2025) ‘Moldova’s electoral commission bars pro-Russian party from Sunday’s parliamentary vote’, Euronews, 26 September. Available at: https://www.euronews.com/2025/09/26/moldovas-electoral-commission-bars-pro-russian-party-from-sundays-parliamentary-vote
• Brender, R. (2025) ‘Moldova’s Election: A Victory Brings Dual Challenge’, EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations, 9 October. Available at: https://www.egmontinstitute.be/moldovas-election-a-victory-brings-dual-challenge/
• Comisia Electorală Centrală, A Republicii Moldova (2025) ‘Alegeri Parlamentare în Republica Moldova’. Available at: https://pv.cec.md/preliminare
• Lovosky, I., Sevciuc, L., Ceaglei, O., Cojocari, M., Velikovsky, D. and Denis, R. (2024) ‘A Russian non-profit interferes in Moldova’s EU referendum – and builds an anti-Western influence machine’, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, 24 October. Available at: https://www.occrp.org/en/feature/a-russian-non-profit-interferes-in-moldovas-eu-referendum-and-builds-an-anti-western-influence-machine
• Peleschuck, D. and Tanas, A. (2025) ‘Moldova’s pro-EU party wins pivotal election in setback for Russia’, Reuters, 3 October. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/moldovas-government-works-secure-pro-eu-path-after-big-election-win-2025-10-03/
• Place, E. (2024) ‘Transnistria: Russia’s next battlefront’, Harvard International Review, 21 April. Available at: https://hir.harvard.edu/transnistria-russias-next-battlefront/
• Rosca, M. and Ciobanu, R. (2025) ‘Strength in uncertainty: evaluating Moldovan resilience in the 2024 presidential elections’, in Natea, M.D., Zaharagiu, V., Sacalean, L. and Costea, S. (eds.) Resilient Multicultural Societies in the Face of Hybrid Threats. Bucureşti: EIKON, pp. 186–198.