US EditionRomania 'Ready' to Discuss Unification After Moldova's President Expresses Support
Maia Sandu supports unification in a referendum but prioritizes Moldova's EU accession due to broader public backing and regional security challenges, including Russian pressure.
- On Jan 12 in Chisinau, President Maia Sandu said `If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania`, Reuters reported.
- Her government has set its sights on joining the EU by 2030 and must carry out difficult reforms amid Russian resistance, as Maia Sandu's pro-EU party won a new mandate last September.
- Demographic ties matter: around 1.5 million Moldovans hold Romanian citizenship, and Moldova is a former Soviet republic of around 2.4 million with a Romanian-speaking majority and a Russian-speaking minority.
- Acknowledging limited public support, Maia Sandu, President of Moldova, described EU integration as a `more realistic objective` since only around one-third back reunification.
- The country, which borders Ukraine and was part of Romania in the interwar period before Soviet annexation, saw pro-Russian Socialists in power as recently as 2020, shaping its security and politics.
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88 Articles
The President of Moldova, Maya Sandu, gave an interview to the British podcast The Rest Is Politics, which was released on January 11, at the beginning of the interview, responding to a question about the development of Moldova's identity during the post-Council period, Sandu said:
The President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, said in an interview for the British podcast The Rest is Politics that she would vote for an association with Romania if one day there was a referendum on the question. For a small country like Moldova, "it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive as a democracy, as a sovereign country". Is the union a realistic option?
For the supporters of the merger it is also about the greatest possible demarcation with Moscow. It was known that Maia Sandu has sympathy for this view. Nevertheless, her statement is a taboo break.
The debate in German press after May Sandu's statement on a possible union with Romania: the protection of democracy or the acceptance of the disappearance of a fragile state under geopolitical pressure?
The position taken by Maia Sandu, unheard of by a senior Moldovan leader, aims above all to highlight the European anchor of Chisinau and to push Brussels to speed up the process of Ukraine's accession to the European Union, in a context of Russian interference and persistent internal frailties.
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