FES BRIEFING MOLDOVA Trade Union Monitor April 2021 POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT The political year 2020 ended with a historic event for the Republic of Moldova – the election and swearing into office of pro-European president Maia Sandu, chairperson of the Action and Solidary Party(PAS) and the first female Moldo­van president. All of 2020 was marked by the presidential elections sched­uled for the end of the year. The Socialists and their unoffi­cial leader President Igor Dodon had chosen their election strategy back in 2019, when they removed their junior part­ner ACUM Block(PAS& Dignity and Truth Platform Party, PPDA) and Prime Minister Maia Sandu from the parliamen­tary majority and government. The ACUM’s place was soon taken by the discredited Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) once led by the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, who had fled the country during the political crisis of the sum­mer of 2019. However, this coalition was short-lived since the PDM faction, still controlled by Plahotniuc, was disman­tled with several MPs forming a new parliamentary group and later a party – Pro Moldova – and others joining the Ș or Party faction. Un­able to provide the necessary number of MPs for the Parliamentary coalition, PDM had to step down from government. Subsequently, the Socialists instead started an informal cooperation in parliament with the Ș or Party faction, which, in the meantime, had increased its ranks with new colleagues from the Pro Moldova Party. All these political games, including party switching and the MP buying phenomena in addition to the disappointment to the electorate caused by political corruption mismanage­ment of the COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention the dys­functional Parliament during the pandemic led to Maia San­du’s victory in the November 2020 presidential elections. Sandu has been a true record-breaker – the highest number of votes an electoral candidate has ever received, the first female president and the largest diaspora participation in elections. Her victory was also a confirmation of the high expectations and demands of society for reform and justice. One of the electoral promises made by Maia Sandu and almost all presi­dential candidates, including the socialist Igor Dodon, was to dissolve the Parliament and hold snap elections. This move was intended to meet society’s desire to get rid of the corrupt deputies represented by the Ș or Party, whose leader is ac­cused of the huge Moldovan bank fraud scandal, and various MPs from other parties, including the Socialists(PSRM), who are accused of political corruption and some of whom have managed to switch parliamentary factions several times in the current legislature. However, after the elections, no party except PAS has proven willing to fulfil this promise. The rea­son for that is the plunging popularity of the current parlia­mentary parties as shown in recent opinion polls, according to which PSRM would score 26.6 per cent(down from 31.15 per cent in the 2019 parliamentary elections), while other parties(e.g. PDM or PPDA), except for the Ș or Party, might not make it into Parliament at all in new elections. With a pro­visional government and with President Sandu and PAS insist­ing on early elections, hilst other political forces opposing this, Moldova seems to have entered into a new phase of political crisis. Sandu’s attempts to provoke early elections by appoint­ing a candidate who received no votes and proposing the same candidate for a second time indicate that Sandu and PAS are not willing to give in to their political opponents, seeking solutions with the Constitutional Court. The latter, however, has ruled Sandu’s disregard of the candidate pro­posed by the parliamentary majority to be unconstitutional. The outcome of this political crisis remains to be seen. One thing is clear though – 2021 is going to be a difficult year for Moldova and having a provisional government is complicat­ing things even more, which means freezing relations with development partners. There was a positive dynamic at the beginning of 2020, when a new Memorandum with the IMF was discussed and a helping hand was given by development partners in the context of the pandemic. However, political instability and various controversial laws voted through by the Moldovan parliament in December 2020 – including the revocation of the»Billion« Law the reopening of the au­dio-visual market to major broadcasting from Russia and 1