Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were among the first republics that were part of the Soviet Union to want to get away from moscow. They managed to materialize this aspiration by joining NATO in 1999 and the EU in the second decade of this century. In the 1990s, all the countries that were part of the USSR ran into many difficulties as independent states, especially in the economic and social sphere. However, progressively, the three Baltic republics managed to overcome the stagnation, modernize their economies y get closer to the west.
And in this 2022, three other ex-Soviet countries took a very important step to follow in their footsteps. Ukraine and Moldova received the official status of candidate countries to be part of the union, while Georgia considers itself a potential candidate country. Brussels asked them reformswith special emphasis on Tbilisi, which is not yet officially a candidate, in fields such as the judicial independence, the delinkagecorruption or transparency, and trusts that it will be able to conclude the negotiations in 2030.
This is how per capita income has evolved in the former Eastern bloc since 1990. The growth of the countries that entered the EU is very striking. In Lithuania it has grown by 245%, in Latvia by 215%, and in Poland by 185%.
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— Eduardo Saldana (@EduardoSaldania) April 21, 2022
Ukraine already looked towards the European Union in 2013, when the president of the moment, Viktor Yanukovych was about to sign the Free Association Agreement with Brussels. He finally backed down, which ignited the spark that ignited the Ukrainian powder keg: the Maidan protests took place and there was a lot of social unrest in different parts of the country, both on the part of far-right factions violent as sectors more pro-Russian in the east of the country, who occupied public buildings and rejected any approach to the West. That tension led first to the donbas war between the rebels, supported by Moscow, and the central government of kyiv, which ended up leading to a Russian invasion of the neighboring state in February.
For this Eastern European country, the priority right now is to recover the control of everything the territory recognized by the international community, and maintain a lasting peace within its borders. Due to the difficulties derived from the presence of Russian troops, the implementation of any reform is practically impossible today. However, at the beginning of the conflict, kyiv already started the process of “delinkage” in November 2021, which included establishing an official list of oligarchs to prevent them from making donations to political partiesan initiative that the Ukrainian president defended, assuring that he wanted to build “a state for 40 million inhabitantsnot only for the one hundred on the Forbes list”. Alex Kocharov that it is important to reduce the power of these magnates, since those indicated on said lists “would not look favorably on approaching the EU because it would create new opportunities for competitors, as well as for embassy who would come from the European Union”.
Tbilisi also tried to get closer to both the EU and NATO at the beginning of the millennium with the help of its former president Mikhail Saakashvili, currently in jail. Years later, after a brief conflict with Russia in 2008, but still open for Georgians, Georgia preferred to look towards Brussels, and according to data from the National Democracy Institute, 74% of Georgians are in favor. Despite having so much support, Brussels asked the country for further reforms and gave it a plan with 12 points to deal with to win the official candidacy like kyiv and Chisinau, mainly focused on protect freedomsreduce the political polarization and the power of oligarchs and improve the judicial independence.
Without control of the entire state
The last of the three that has taken the path towards belonging to the European Union has been Chisinau, hand in hand with the pro-European and center-right Maia Sandu and his party, the NOT, during which Moldova will have to overcome some major pitfalls.
Mihail Popsoi, Parliament spokesman and member of the government party, comments to EL PERIÓDICO that, from the outset, “the immense majority of Moldovan citizens are in favor of joining the EU”, in addition to the fact that “a significant part of them are already European citizens having romanian passport”. Specifically, according to data from the Moldovan consultancy Magenta, about 60% of citizens would be in favor of belonging to the EU, while 31% are against it.
A problem shared by the three countries to enter the EU is that their governments do not control 100% of the internationally recognized territory, as is the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, de facto independent; Crimea and parts of southern and eastern Ukraine; and Transnistria in Moldova itself. Independent analyst Cristian Vlaas explains that, in the case of Moldova, “separatism damages European integrationpreventing the application of the FTA and the full application of the mechanisms of human rights protection and Moldovan laws”.
Although having these rebel territories is a hindrance for their respective states, Popsoi points out that it would be unfair deny entry to the EU to these countries for this reason. “Cyprus is a full member of the EU and to this day continues to have the Northern Cyprus conflict” recalls the Moldovan parliamentarian.
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