The referendum on the "constitutionalisation" of European integration highlighted the vulnerabilities of the European vector in Moldova, which had gone unnoticed in the last four years. It became clear that support for the European Union per se was not a determining factor for the majority of the population (50+1%) to vote in favour of the referendum and to support the re-election of Maia Sandu as president.

49% of Moldovan citizens went to the polls to participate in the referendum and of these 50.4% voted in favour of introducing European integration as an irreversible vector of foreign policy in the constitution. Thus, only around 25% of voters voted ‘yes’ in the referendum, initiated on the basis of Sandu's proposal made at the end of 2023. The rest of the voters, representing around 75% of the total, voted against it, boycotted it or were absent.

According to the latest polls conducted before the referendum, 54.5% of respondents were in favour of the EU. In total, 47.9% of respondents announced that they would vote in favour in the referendum on the "Europeanisation" of the constitution and 23% indicated that they would vote against. The referendum on October 20 revealed a worse picture that could have repercussions for the EU's image in Moldova. The actual number of those who voted against the referendum question was twice as high (49%) compared to those identified in the polls (23%).

One of the possible explanations is that political networks linked to Ilan Shor, deemed to be criminal by Moldovan security forces, managed to use illegal financial resources, transferred through the Russian banking system, to influence a large number of votes. Initially, official sources in Chisinau indicated the figure of 130,000, then Sandu almost doubled it to 300,000. Contrary to these contradictory data presented by Moldovan security services and the country's acting president, Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu announced that estimates of fraudulent votes would amount to 220,000.

Shor and Moscow's attempt to influence the direction of the vote in the referendum is indisputable. Police claimed that Shor transferred up to $24mn to virtual accounts of Moldovans in the Russian banking system in October. However, questions are being raised about the rest of the voters who did not support the referendum. If we assume that 300,000 are fraudulent votes (according to Sandu's claims), then that is less than half of the total of 738,737 people who voted “against". In other words, almost 439,000 Moldovans opposed the referendum. 

Part of this group has completely different geopolitical views; they do not adhere to the Eurasian integration openly promoted only by Shor's supporters, but favour ​​a balanced foreign policy. Another part of the 400,000 citizens who are not suspected of having been influenced by Shor’s efforts (300,000 people out of a total of 738,737 who voted "no" in the referendum) voted against, but not so much against the referendum as against the style of government of Sandu and her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS).

Worrying signals for the EU

The referendum, in which 50.4% of voters (25% of the total electorate) voted in favour, has shown that, although polls indicate that 54% of the population sympathises with the EU, at least 4% are willing to penalise the EU for the quality of governance in the country. 

In other words, this referendum is a signal to Brussels, which must get to the heart of the negative vote, beyond Russian interference, in order to avoid an image blow similar to that of 2013-2014. In light of several image crises of the then pro-EU governments in Chisinau, including crimes in the banking sector that resulted in losses of around 15% of Moldovan GDP, public support for the EU fell sharply from 50.3% in April 2013 to 43.9% in November 2014 and 39.5% in April 2015.

These data are worrying for pro-EU forces in Moldova, who find themselves in an uncomfortable dilemma.

On the one hand, pro-EU forces other than Sandu's PAS have been marginalised on Moldovan political and media platforms. The co-optation of civil society and media elites by the PAS and Sandu has placed the other parties (Bloc "Împreună", CUB, PLDM, etc.) in artificial opposition to the government and the pro-EU vector itself. They have been portrayed in Brussels as unreliable and weak. The co-optation of different civil society representatives and media sources has diverted attention from the governing style of the ruling party to the monitoring and stigmatisation of opposition activity, both pro-Russian and pro-EU.

On the other hand, the devaluation of pro-EU political alternatives by Sandu and the ruling party has created a huge dependency on the EU by the current government in Chisinau. The EU is therefore reluctant to criticise failures in the reform process or abuses in the act of governing in Moldova. Tolerance towards the lack of good governance in Chisinau is exaggerated and exploited by Russian propaganda, which attributes responsibility for the actions of Moldovan leaders to Brussels' fear of holding accountable the current elite of Moldovan politics.

Despite having the sad example of 2013-2014 before it, the EU is betting on Sandu's re-election in the second round, taking the risks associated with the image damage that Sandu's defeat by Alexandru Stoianoglo could represent. 

Although Brussels has little time to change its strategy regarding engagement with the government in Chisinau, after the second round the EU institutions will have to carry out an in-depth and frank analysis of the way they have handled the "Moldovan dossier" in order to understand the geopolitical costs of maintaining the current strategy in view of the parliamentary elections in 2025. The miscalculations of the EU will be seized on by Russia.

Denis Cenusa is an associate expert at think-tank EESC in Lithuania and Moldova, and a PhD candidate at Justus-Liebig-Universität in Germany. He tweets @DionisCenusa.