Over 70 percent of the population of Romania supports the idea of unification with the Republic of Moldova, and this week the lower house of the Romanian parliament approved a bill that proposes exactly that.
At first glance, the adoption of the bill seems to be a significant development, even a signal that an idea that has been discussed for a long time is starting to take on real dimensions. In reality, however, the bill was adopted without active parliamentary support or debate, but only because the deadline for considering the legislative act had expired and for this reason it is considered “tacitly adopted“, as Romanian parliamentary procedure states. The bill automatically passes to the upper house of parliament – The Senate, on which its final approval depends.
WHO IS BEHIND THE BILL?
The legislative initiative was submitted by the sovereigntist party “SOS Romania“ of the controversial MEP Diana Sosioaca. Earlier this year, the European Parliament lifted Sosioaca's parliamentary immunity so that she could be investigated in Romania on charges of publicly promoting the cult of individuals convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as of denying, contesting and belittling the Holocaust and its consequences, as well as other crimes.
In the Romanian media, Sosioaca is often criticized for her ties to Russia. At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month, Soshoaca directly addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin, stating that “the Romanian people do not hate him“, that the people of Romania want peace with Russia and do not support sending weapons and money to Ukraine.
In March 2023, Soshoaca submitted to parliament a bill that envisaged denouncing the Treaty on Good Neighborhood and Cooperation between Romania and Ukraine, ratified by law in 1997, and annexing territories in Ukraine that belonged to Romania in the period between the two world wars.
In April this year, Soshoaca's party also submitted a bill for unification with Moldova.
A PEACEFUL CHANGE OF BORDER
According to the bill of the “SOS Romania“ party “the Romanian Parliament confirms its adherence to the provisions of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki (1973-1975 – ed. note), which allows for the possibility of changing borders by peaceful and diplomatic means".
According to the text of the normative act, the Romanian Parliament decides on the unification of Romania and the Republic of Moldova and authorizes the government to immediately begin negotiations with the authorities in Chisinau to finalize the unification. After the adoption of the law and its publication in the State Gazette, the competent international bodies, the government of the Republic of Moldova, the USA, NATO, the UN and the EU should be notified, the bill also stipulates.
The explanatory memorandum states, among other things, that the initiative opens the way for negotiations on the return to the homeland of territories “forcibly torn away by the Bolsheviks with the help of the great powers“.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The territory of today's Republic of Moldova (the historical region of Bessarabia) was part of Romania in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1859, the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were united under the rule of Alexandru Ioan Cuza in the newly created Romanian state. Romania celebrates this historical moment as the “Little Unification“. After the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), the Treaty of Berlin took these territories from Romania and returned them to Russia, and in exchange, Romania received Northern Dobruja.
In 1918, the lands of present-day Moldova again became part of Romania during the “Great Unification“, after the Bessarabian legislature voted for unification with the Kingdom of Romania. That year, the historical provinces of Bukovina, Transylvania, Banat, Crisana and Maramureş also joined the Kingdom of Romania.
However, in 1940, as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the USSR issued an ultimatum to Romania and annexed Bessarabia, creating the Moldavian SSR. Romania, as an ally of Germany, regained control of the territory in the summer of 1941. However, in August 1944, the Red Army reoccupied the region.
For nearly five decades, Moscow has promoted the idea of a separate Moldovan identity and a "Moldovan language" written in Cyrillic. After Moldova declared its independence in 1991, the thesis of the existence of a "Moldovan language" continued to exist, but in March 2023, the Moldovan parliament declared Romanian the official language of the state and replaced all references to "Moldovan" in legislation.
A large Bulgarian community lives in the southern part of the Republic of Moldova - descendants of the Bulgarians who migrated there from our lands more than 200 years ago. Bulgarians in Moldova have the status of a national minority and the right to dual citizenship. According to official data in 2022, the Bulgarian community in Moldova numbered over 50,000 people, with Bulgarians being the sixth largest ethnic group.
The autonomous region of Gagauzia is also located in the southern part of Moldova. Gagauzia's approximately 140,000 inhabitants are a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic community that professes Orthodox Christianity and has had tense relations with the central authorities since the declaration of independence.
About half a million people live in the self-proclaimed independent Transnistria. Pro-Russian separatists in Transnistria started a conflict with Chisinau back in 1990, which ended favorably for them thanks to Russian troops, who continue to be present in the region today.
HOW DO THEY VIEW THE IDEA OF UNIFICATION IN MOLDOVA?
A public opinion poll in Moldova, conducted by the Ates Research Group agency in late May and early June this year, showed that 38.5 percent of Moldovan citizens would vote “yes” in a possible referendum on unification with Romania. 48.1 percent voted against the idea, with the difference divided between those who were undecided and those who would not vote, Moldovan media reported.
However, if the votes of the Moldovan diaspora, numbering nearly one million people, are added, support for unification with Romania rises to 55 percent, according to a survey conducted in March and cited by the Moldovan newspaper “Cotidianul“.
The topic of unification was also mentioned at the state level at the beginning of the year, when in a podcast interview, Moldovan President Maia Sandu told British journalists that if there was a referendum on unification with Romania, she would vote “yes”. At that time, Sandu supported unification for the first time in her capacity as head of state. She repeated her thesis in an interview with the French newspaper “Le Monde“ in April.
Sandu, like over 850,000 other Moldovan citizens, hold Romanian passports. However, the President of Moldova admits that the idea of unification is not widely supported in the country, and in connection with the unification bill adopted by the lower house of the Romanian parliament, she said that it was the work of an agent of Moscow.
„This is a document proposed by an agent of Moscow, and the purpose of this action is to discredit the idea of unification, nothing else. It's as if I were to go to parliament tomorrow with a legislative initiative in which I would write that we want France to become part of the Republic of Moldova. I ask the government to take it into account. Unification is not done like that, we all understand it very well“, commented Maia Sandu.
When asked whether a referendum on the issue could be organized in the near future, she replied that she did not believe that the Republic of Moldova was close to such a scenario.
The Romanian bill provoked a sharp reaction from the leader of the socialists in Moldova and former president Igor Dodon.
“It is a pity that politicians in Romania have launched such an imperialist policy, which risks provoking a conflict between the two countries. And it is a shame that the politicians in the leadership of Moldova are silent or tacitly approve of Romanian territorial expansionism“, Dodon pointed out on his Facebook profile.
HOW IS RUSSIA REACTING?
The spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, reacted to the bill by indicating that the term that should be used in this process is “annexation“, the Mediafax agency reported.
Zakharova noted that the term “unification“ implies the existence of a common desire and the organization of a referendum.
“Figuratively speaking, of course, in the general perception this is exactly what an annexation looks like. Given that the term “annexation“ "is constantly used in the Western media in relation to our country without legal grounds, perhaps this term should be applied in the same way to a situation that certainly meets all the conditions for such a qualification," commented Zakharova, quoted by Mediafax.
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE DRAFT LAW?
The authoritative Romanian news site G4Media pointed out that it is a “revisionist bill, which has been constantly used by Russian propaganda to justify the revisionism of the Russian Federation“. G4Media also calls the party that submitted the bill – “SOS Romania“, a “revisionist“ and “extremist“ political formation.
The unification does not happen through a law in parliament, but through a long procedure at the international level, which is validated in referendums, former Romanian constitutional judge Augustin Zegryan commented to the news site “Hotnews“. He added that only after these conditions are met is a law adopted that confirms the decisions taken.
Political analyst Cristian Parvulescu noted that such an initiative has no real chance of passing the upper house of parliament, Digi 24 reported.
Romanian media also specified that the Chamber of Deputies did not vote “for” the project, but simply extended the legal 45-day deadline for debates and, according to the constitution, automatically transferred to the Senate.
Although supporters of the idea of unifying Romania and Moldova distanced themselves from the bill of Soshoaca's party, it should be noted that the topic is common to the nationalist right in Romania, led by figures such as Gheorghe Simion – leader of the second parliamentary force “Alliance for the Unification of Romanians”. It treats unification with Moldova as a question of identity and links it to historical narratives that sometimes escalate into territorial claims to neighboring Ukraine in a way that worries both Kiev and Chisinau, noted the international news channel of Polish state television TVP World.
Romanian President Nicos Dan has said repeatedly that if unification of Romania and Moldova ever takes place, it should be the result of a democratic choice of Moldovans and flow naturally from the European integration of the Republic of Moldova, and not from nationalist gestures from Bucharest.
Romania is ready in case the citizens of the Republic of Moldova support a unification project, President Nicos Dan said at a press conference in April.
„For our part, I think nothing has changed since the unanimous vote of the parliament in 2018, which stated that Romania is ready at any time when the citizens of the Republic of Moldova want it wish“, said the Romanian President at the time.
On March 27, 2018, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the "Great Unification", the Romanian Parliament convened in a solemn session of both chambers and adopted a symbolic political declaration, in which it declared as fully legitimate the desire of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova, who support the unification of the two countries. The Parliament in Bucharest declared that Romania and its citizens are and will always be ready to respond to any natural manifestation of reunification as an expression of the sovereign will of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova.