Whilst working in Spain, just a few weeks before the bloody events which accompanied the parliamentary elections in Moldova, I have had the opportunity to speak at some length with a young woman who hails from there. We talked about the difficulties faced by Moldavians living and working in Spain. She stunned me when she told me that she doesn’t speak Romanian, while speaking it to me nonetheless !  Sadly, the Soviet cultural brainwashing she was subjected to in school had led her to believe that we actually spoke two different languages : I Romanian and she, Moldavian. As I have explained to her, the Romanian language spoken in Transylvania is enriched by many Hungarian and German words, a legacy of shared history. The fact that her vocabulary included Russian words, therefore, was only to be expected, but their impact on the whole was only minor.

There are many of our conationals living in Moldova, young and old alike, who were forced to accept that the Romanian spoken by them is an altogether different language. After the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union, a Russian-inspired puppet state appeared on the fringes of Europe, very similar in nature to the now-defunct German Democratic Republic. There were calls at the time for its reunification with Romania, but Russian geopolitical designs in the region and the presence there of Russia’s 14th Army prevented such an outcome.

Subsequently, the Romanian national reunification agenda had, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist. Stupidly enough, Romanian politicians are nowadays treating their conationals as members of the Romanian diaspora and are limiting their assistance to providing Romanian-language books, and extending Romanian citizenship or scholarships to a chosen few from Moldova.

Worse still, until recently the EU’s own foreign policy in the region has relied heavily on Washington’s lead, which lumped Moldova with countries such as Georgia and Ukraine into its Eastern partnership arrangements. Such serious political errors have allowed the Voronin communist regime to thrive in Chisinau, as the majority of Moldavians have become convinced that neither Romanian politicians, nor the EU decision-makers care about their fate. This unfortunate outcome is primarily the fault of various Romanian administrations, who have failed to explain to their European partners that Moldavians are actually their conationals and that they do eventually intend to reunite.

The Romanian president’s latest parliamentary speech is a case in point. After all the political turmoil in Chisinau, all he could come up with were calls on the government to expedite the processing of Romanian citizenship applications for those who can prove Romanian ancestry. This, to be sure, falls way short of providing Romania’s citizens, the Moldavians and the rest of the Union with a set of clear and coherent measures, paving the way for a German-style reunification outcome.

To start with, as I have first advocated in 1995, Romania should replace its present administrative organisation with a federal (regional) structure, which would be more palatable to Moldavians in the event of reunification. At the same time, the European Parliament and Commission should be helped by Romanian politicians to fully understand that the best all-around solution to Moldova’s woes lies in its reunification with Romania.

Granted, as opposed to Germany, Romania lacks a strong economy capable of easily absorbing the extra four million citizens of Moldova. As matters now stand, Romania finds it difficult to adequately care for its own citizens, a few million of which are working in other EU member countries, alongside about a million Moldavians. Once the effects of the current economic crisis would have subsided, EU member states will, however, benefit from the labour and skills Moldavians have to offer. 

Moreover, the lack of a national reunification agenda has also prevented the Romanian state from making adequate financial provisions for such an event. In the long run, however, extending Romanian citizenship to all Moldavians, irrespective of their ethnic background, and incorporating Moldova into the Romanian state might prove less costly and a more rational EU policy towards Moldova than any other political alternative.