De la statutul de asociat la cel de ţară candidat la UE

The European aspirations of the Republic of Moldova appeared as early as 1994, when the Cooperation and Partnership Agreement with the EU (November 28, 1994) and the Moldova-EU Action Plan within the Neighborhood Policy (February 22, 2005) were signed. Some governments from Chisinau have even introduced the phrase European integration in their titles, such as: the Alliance for European Integration, the Pro-European Coalition and the Political Alliance for European Moldova. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself completed its name with the phrase „European integration”. The European path of the Republic of Moldova took a clearer and more concrete shape during the governance of the Alliance for European Integration, when it signed the Association Agreement with the EU, in Brussels, on June 27, 2014, which was then ratified by the European Parliament, on November 13, 2014. However, the implementation of the reforms provided for in that document were procrastinated, postponed and mostly imitated by subsequent governments. This caused the Chisinau authorities’ relations with the EU and other Euro-Atlantic bodies to deteriorate continuously and ultimately lead to their minimization and the isolation of the Republic of Moldova on the international level. The coming to power of President Maia Sandu and her party (PAS), with an assumed pro- European program and orientation, created a particularly favorable internal political con text and radically changed the relations of the Republic of Moldova with the Euro-Atlantic bodies. This situation, as well as the prioritization of the geo-strategic interests of the USA and the EU in the Black Sea area, after the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, helped the Republic of Moldova obtain, in an unexpectedly short time, the status of a candidate country for joining the EU.