For the Moldovans, the Europe Day celebrations began on May 18 and will continue until May 26. They did not coincide with the May 9 ceremonies elsewhere in Europe, because on that date, the Moldovan government preferred to commemorate WWII Victory Day in the presence of Russian Deputy Premier, Dmitri Rogozine. In the Jurnal de Chişinău, Petru Bogatu deplores what he terms “an abundant flow of misery in the Grand National Assembly Square.” The noted op-ed writer continues —

The orgies indulged in by the Russians on the occasion of ‘Victory Day’ are proof that, 22 years after our declaration of independence, we have plumbed new depths in shiftless politics. With regard to European standards, the behaviour of our leaders can best be described as ‘anything goes’.

The Europe Day celebrations were opened by the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, who called on Moldovan authorities to do “all they could for the democratisation of the Republic.” However, Jurnal de Chişinău insists that Russia ”has reconquered Moldova without tanks or artillery.” The newspaper adds that “President Putin’s emissary has indicated the next road, leads east rather than west,” and voices its hope that the new Leancă government, confirmed on May 15, will extricate the country from this ambiguity.

President Nicolae Timofti appointed Deputy Prime Minister Iurie Leancă, of the Liberal Democrat Party (PLDM) to lead the government on April 23, following the Constitutional Court’s decision to invalidate his previous decree to appoint Vlad Filat (PLDM).

Suspected of corruption, Filat was forced to step down on March 5 following a vote of no confidence. According to the Constitutional Court, he is no longer entitled to lead the government.

Four years after the Twitter Revolution, which marked the end of communist government in Moldova and ushered the Alliance for European Integration into power, the daily points out that there has been no inquiry into atrocities that occurred during the unrest.

Officially, three people were killed and more than 400 were tortured, but the identities of those to blame, “faces hidden from the eyes of the Moldovan public”, have never been established.

The country’s prosecutors and part of its press argue that the true victims were police officers. “Who would be angry if the truth was known?” wonders Timpul. The pro-European government, which was democratically elected in the aftermath of the vote, was forced out of office on March 5, and the country is currently ruled by an interim government.

On March 20, President Nicolae Timofti announced that the signature of an association agreement with the EU – considered to be a first step towards accession – has been postponed.

The signature was due to take place at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in the autumn, however disruption resulting from the collapse of Vlad Filat’s pro-European government on March 5 will mean that it will not go ahead before 2014.

Timofti's official explanation for the postponement was “a lack of time to translate the document into the EU’s 23 official languages,” which leads the newspaper to wonder is this “EU, see you soon, or goodbye?"

"Health is dividing Europe in two," notes El País commenting on the publication of The European Health Report by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The Spanish daily highlights that "Spaniards are among the Europeans who live the longest." This longevity is explained in part by their Mediterranean diet and lower alcohol consumption. Spanish women live the longest in Europe, with a life expectancy of 85 years, 12 years longer than people from Moldova or Kyrgyzstan whose life expectancies are the shortest on the continent.

This is one of the indicators that demonstrate the major imbalances which still exist between Europe's 53 countries. Eastern Europe continues to have the worst mortality rates, rates of illness and rates of access to clean water. This paints the picture of a duel continent.

Despite this, "life expectancy is increasing in Europe," notes El País. And German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung also remarks on this situation.

Life expectancy is clearly increasing. In 2010, Europeans reached an average age of 76, five years more than in 1980. But a huge gap has opened between the countries in which life expectancy is the highest and those in which it is the lowest. The Swiss, Icelanders, and many inhabitants of the Mediterranean zone reach an average age of 82 years. People living in Russia can hope to live only 69 years.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung remarks that the highest cause of death is a heart attack and that the rate of death due to cardiovascular illness is 13 times higher in Eastern European countries than in the rest of Europe. For El País, which notes that the report does not take into account the health effects of the crisis, "one of the keys to improving these figures is to improve public health policies".

The Alliance for European Integration, the ruling coalition led by Vlad Filat, was voted out of office on March 5 by communist, democrat and independent MPs, who backed a motion of no confidence.

For the daily, the motion, which secured the support of 54 of the 101 members of Moldova’s parliament, ”will only serve the interests of Moscow,” which is seeking to distance the country from the EU.

Timpul also wonders if Filat is not about “to face the same fate as Ukrainian former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko,” who has been imprisoned by the current government in Kiev on charges of corruption.

On February 14, Moldova’s Liberal-Democratic Prime Minister, Vlad Filat, announced that he would quit the Alliance for European Integration (the coalition in power since 2009), deploring prevailing corruption and the politisation of high-profile state jobs.

However, according to the press, the real catalyst for the crisis was the fatal accident in the course of a hunting trip attended by several high ranking officials, which took place in December 2012, and particularly the role of the former attorney general, who is member of one of the parties in the ruling coalition.

Diplomats in Romania failed to anticipate the crisis in the country's eastern neighbour. Swedish, Polish and British foreign ministers are expected to arrive in Chișinău next week.

Caught between a desire to join the EU and the need to maintain good relations with Russia, on which it is totally energy-dependent, Moldova faces a cruel dilemma. Moscow is putting increasing pressure on the former Soviet Republic to withdraw from an energy cooperation agreement signed in 2011 with the EU. In exchange, it is proposing a 30% rebate on Russian-supplied gas.

Temptation or coercion? wonders a leader writer in Moldavian daily Jurnal de Chișinău, adding that –

... the crude proposal made by the Russian Federation's Energy Minister Alexander Novak suggests the Russians were in a position of force. [...] Thus the impression that Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat was blackmailed.

In making the proposal, Moscow appears to be pushing Chisinau to turn towards the Eurasian Union promoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than towards the EU. "What is the best way for a country like Moldova to hold talks with a powerful country such as Russia?" questions the Jurnal de Chișinău. Accepting Russia's proposal would lead the country to failure, the paper argues, pointing out that the Ukrainians –

... have already got caught by ceding Sebastopol, by allowing the Russian military presence in the Crimea. And? They are still desperately moaning that the price of gas is unbearable. [...] On the political scene, a man hanging his head does not inspire pity [...] on the contrary, he inspires aggression because he seems impotent and thus accessible. The same holds true for a state.

It is in this context that 1,000 to 7,000 people demonstrated in Chisinau in favour of a union with Romania, of which Moldavia was a province until 1945. This "myth of the ancient birthright" is competing with two new myths. One concerns a union with Transnistria, a secessionist Russian-speaking territory, and the Eurasian Union dear to Putin. But union with Romania is already a dead issue, says Moldovan daily Timpul, because –

... the perspective of union with Romania is already included in the context of including Moldova in the EU. The union with other Romanians will be thereby accomplished through a unique European dimension.

At the end of three years of political turmoil, Moldovans finally have a president. The parliament elected as head of state a Europhile, Nicolae Timofti, until then president of the magistrates' council. The president's post has been vacant since 2009 due to the inability of the MPs to reach a necessary majority, explains Moldovan daily Timpul.

The election comes at a key moment, says Moldovan leader writer George Damian, because –

… it is a secret for no one that Russia hopes for a government in Chişinău that will accept the presence of Russian troops in Transnistria. [...] This situation explains all the events currently affecting Moldova.

The alternative, however, would be, he concludes –

… to keep the current coalition [Alliance for European Integration, AIE] while aiming for the European Union [...] because, in spite of its problems, Moldova can join the EU in the near future [...] The Union evolves, principles are discussed, solutions are sought, but it will not disappear and Moldavia has the opportunity to join this community of States.

"When will we meet for an election?", wonders Timpul in the wake of a troubled night in Moldova’s parliament. At midnight on 14 November, the communists and the pro-Europeans, the two main political forces in the capital Chişinău, had yet to find a common candidate. On 18 November, the parliament will have to elect a successor to the acting president, who is the country’s third since the 7 April revolution in 2009 put an end to the communists’ hold on power.

Moldova, which aims to join the EU and wants to be included in the Eastern Partnership, is increasingly specialising in "events that never take place", remarks the daily. There have been several failed attempts to elect a president and a referendum to see if he should be elected directly by the people, which was invalidated by a low turnout… Nothing is working out. "Well done, politicians! When are we going to meet? We have some business to settle…", announces Timpul.

For the author of Aux frontières de l’Europe (“At the Frontiers of Europe”) only in few former communist countries and along the external border of the EU can one still encounter the soul of the Old Continent.

How did you get the idea of travelling extensively along the eastern border of the European Union? I wanted a border that really still was one. As I come from Trieste, I consider myself a son of the border. I was born the same day that the border was drawn around Trieste, on December 20, 1947. This boundary was dismantled exactly sixty years later to the day [when several countries of eastern Europe entered the Schengen area], which coincides, of course, with my sixtieth birthday. That evening my Polish partner [photographer Monika Bulaja] and I looked at each other, and we said: “After wanting this border gone for sixty years, how are we going to handle it, now that it’s no longer there?” It was a wonderful invitation to travel: where has that sense of mystery, which was always wrapped up with the border, gone off to? That day, a little tipsy, a little euphoric, as we were taking down the old Yugoslav border barrier in the middle of a forest in the valley of Rosandra, where you can find the last Italian inn before Yugoslavia, I decided that I would go looking for that real frontier: a place where I would still find genuine border guards. Did you find them?

And how! Can you imagine? If I had made this trip twenty-five years ago, once I had crossed back into Slovenia I would never have had to show my passport, because I would have been inside the zone of the Warsaw Pact and the former USSR. This time, however, the continual coming and going from the Schengen area and the European Union (EU) meant that I found myself – especially between Norway and Russia and between Latvia and Russia – facing frontiers of an incredible rigidity, far tougher than they were before the Wall fell. I wanted to see what there was behind this barrier, this limit. One quickly grasps that there is no difference between one side of the border and the other, despite these absurd barriers, and that in fact the line of the EU frontier runs along a series of trans-boundary regions with wonderful names, like Courland [Lithuania] or Bothnia [Scandinavia] or Dobrudja [Romania / Bulgaria], which existed before the great nationalist fever of the nineteenth century. These are the names and regions that make up the true heart of the continent. The geographical centre of Europe, one hears, is somewhere in western Ukraine... Europe has several centres. One is in Lithuania, one in the Carpathians, one in Poland. It depends on how we measure Europe. What is certain is that Europe is higher than it is wide. The centre of Europe right now is nothing more than a pale imitation of the West, even if strong traces of the East are found in it. This mixture of the Slavic and Judaism, which is the profound soul of Europe, I have found only in these border regions. This is where the heart of Europe beats for me, the heart I had heard of and that I was looking for: a certain maternal femininity, great rivers…. It was in Russia, Ukraine, Poland where I found them. Your story carries an almost immoderate love for the Slavic spirit and the way of life of the people you met. And a kind of disgust towards certain aspects of western Europe. What is the problem of western Europe?

It’s a world that’s more homogeneous, more fake, more celluloid, where time hurries faster every day and burns up in a corrida of e-mails and text messages, where we’ve lost contact with the earth – “zemljia” in Russian. It’s a word that, with “voda”, or water, has followed me throughout my career. In your book you praise the authenticity of the inhabitants of these border regions. Yet many of them have one wish – to live in western Europe or, at least, to adopt the lifestyle. That can’t be forgotten, of course. Without telling them that they’re sticking a finger in their own eye, however, we can remind them that not everything is rosy on this side of the border. Older people are aware of it: they realise that the solidarity that once marked relations among people is no longer there among the Westernised youth. You often mention the “Slavic soul” in your book. How would you define it? Slavs are aware that they are not the brains of the continent, but of being, somewhat, its guts. They let their instincts come to the surface. While this may lead to an incredible aggressiveness, in other situations it gives rise to an unforgettable tenderness. In my book I write of a scene in Minsk, where a group of young women come up to a musician playing an accordion and tell him: “Come on, Igor, make us cry!” A Westerner would never have done it. He would have needed a song to anesthetise that life that’s going by too fast, too senselessly. It’s what I like about the Slavs – this sharing of the shadowy part of their lives, of the melancholia. Has the accession of ten former communist countries to the EU changed Europe?

Yes, because they’ve brought an infusion of dramatic nationalism. From this point of view, the Poles have been a disaster. This feeling that they’re a martyr people who stood up to the Communist moloch. They’ve rediscovered nationalism after the end of nationalism. In Poland it’s pathological. It’s a world centred on itself. What happened with the plane that crashed carrying President Lech Kaczynski and all the other leaders [which went down in Smolensk in April 2010] is a good example: there was no question of the Russians taking them for fools! In your book you seem to make complaints against Europe and its institutions....

I blame Europe and Italy for being asleep, for not being aware of the nationalist and centrifugal forces that are tugging it apart. We have not remembered the lesson from the Balkans: it’s enough simply to identify an enemy to a people short of reference points for that people to take it on as truth. Today, a ruling class facing collapse that would like to transform a political standoff into an ethnic standoff would have no trouble doing so. We no longer have the anti-fascist antibodies, but nor do we have the antibodies of criticism, either. From this point of view, Italy – but Belgium too – are risk areas. One finds there an exasperated regionalist victimisation. It’s a form of resentment of the periphery towards the centre. Interview by Gian Paolo Accardo 

Within the framework of its Neighbourhood Policy, "the EU has made democracy a condition for aid to Arab countries," headlines the daily El País. On 25 May, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, and the Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, presented the new strategy for the 16 countries that are the European Union’s neighbours on its eastern and southern borders. Of the seven billion euros of aid to be distributed between now and 2013, five billion has been earmarked for countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.

Until now, points out El País, in its approach to countries like Egypt and Tunisia "the EU strategy has been based on the principle of ‘security in exchange for millions of euros.’” The parameters that have now been announced -- free elections, freedom of speech in the press, an independent judiciary, the fight against corruption, and democratic control of security and armed forces -- will enable Europe to measure the level of democracy in these countries. The Madrid daily notes that the plan unveiled by the European diplomacy chief also includes measures for the control of migration flows. However, it points out that "Ashton has denied that the plan offers money to prevent immigration."

“It’s the next big step in globalisation, and there’s good reason to wish that it wasn't,” remarks Vanity Fair. American pharmaceuticals companies are increasingly testing new drugs in foreign countries, on subjects who do not benefit from the necessary safeguards. The trend has emerged in Third World countries but also in Europe, points out the New York monthly, and it has been reflected in the figures for the number of clinical trial investigators registered with the US Food and Drug Administration, which “fell 5.2 percent in the U. S. between 2004 and 2007 while increasing 16 percent in Eastern Europe, 12 percent in Asia, and 10 percent in Latin America.”

As Vanity Fair explains, delocalization has enabled drug companies to take advantage of conditions that are less strict and less expensive when conducting clinical trials which will “help persuade the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to declare the drugs safe and effective for Americans.” In 2008, 80 percent of products submitted for approval to the FDA were tested outside the United States: in all 58,788 trials, of which 876 were conducted in Romania, 589 in Ukraine and 716 in Turkey. Estonia, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Croatia are also considered to be good locations for off-shore trials.

The lack of proper regulatory framework has meant that many of these trials have proved to be deadly. The magazine sites the example of a flu-vaccine trial  conducted in a hostel for the homeless in Grudziadz, Poland. The subjects, who were paid two dollars for participating in the programme, “thought they were getting a regular flu shot. They were not. At least 20 of them died.”

"Moldova has defeated communism." So ran Timpul's front page a few hours after this weekend’s general election, with exit polls showing a clear majority for the AIE – Alliance for European Integration. However, with almost all votes counted, and with its main rival the Communist party on 44 seats, the AIE, at 57 seats, has failed to obtain the 61 needed to elect the next Moldovan president and put an end to the instability that has plagued the country over the last year. According to Timpul, there are two possible scenarios that could break the deadlock: "a betrayal" by the country’s Liberal Democratic Party, whose 31 MPs may quit the AEI to join forces with the communists, or yet another election.

"Romania and Moldova sign border treaty” headlines Timpul the day after the two countries reached agreement in Bucharest. This is an agreement that has been 19 years in the making, points out the Moldovan daily, ever since Moldova declared independence from the ex-USSR. The Moldovan daily adds that during her recent visit to Bucharest German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the treaty as a “step in the right direction" towards resolving the dispute between Moldova and the breakaway region of Transnistria, with EU enlargement into the Balkans in prospect.

"Which market will the EU promise Russia for a nod to Moldovan reunification?" wonders România liberă. According to the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, German chancellor Angela Merkel is offering Russian president Dmitri Medvedev autonomous status and economic aid for Transnistria, Moldova’s breakaway Russian-speaking province, in hopes of eventually bringing it into the EU fold along with the rest of Moldova. The country itself is mostly Romanian-speaking, and jealously protected by Bucharest. Berlin, as a new temporary member of the UN Security Council, "is trying to resolve Europe’s deadlocked conflicts”, comments Alexander Rahr, director of the foreign policy think-tank, the Berthold Beitz Centre. The matter will be thrashed out at the upcoming summit in France between Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Dmitri Medvedev on 17 October.

"The people have chosen,” headlines Timpul the day after a Moldovan referendum on whether the people should elect their president directly. The plebiscite came to naught, explains the paper: only 29% of the nation’s 2.5 million voters went to the polls, but a 33% turnout was required for a valid referendum. This intended constitutional reform, the first of its kind in 20 years of national sovereignty, was desired by the Alliance for European Integration, the party currently in power. Their object: to end the political crisis that has been wearing on for over a year now, after four abortive attempts by parliament to elect a successor to communist Vladimir Voronin, who resigned back in September 2009. The country is now bracing for a dissolution of parliament and early parliamentary and presidential elections.

The presence of an official Moldovan delegation at a ceremony to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany to be held in Moscow on 9 May has outraged public opinion and members of the country's ruling coalition, the Alliance for European Integration (AIE). In particular, the date evokes memories of Moldova's inclusion in the USSR and also the lingering question of the pro-Russian secessionist territory of Transnistria which the Romanian speaking republic lays claim to. The Jurnal de Chişinău reports that opponents of Moldovan participation at the event, who already organised a massive protest which brought thousands of demonstrators onto the streets of Chisnau at the end of April, will be none too pleased by the news that, under pressure from his party colleagues, acting president Mihai Ghimpu has now overcome his initial reticence and accepted the Russian invitation. However, Ghimpu, who recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Romania, will not take part in a meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) scheduled for 8 May. According to the daily, the affair has highlighted "an invisible conflict," between Russia and the West, and the "strategic role" of Moldova "in the establishment of new spheres of influence in the former territory of the Soviet Union."

In response to Washington's plan to deploy missile defence systems in Romania and Bulgaria, the Jurnalul de Chisinau reports that the President of the breakaway territory of Transnistria, Igor Smirnov, has offered to provide locations for mobile batteries of Russia's tactical Iskander missiles between Moldova and Russia. The proposal announced by Smirnov on the occasion of a visit to Moscow echoes an official request to Russian president Dmitri Medvedev by the Ravnopravie (equal rights) movement – which represents the separatist Russian minority – to deploy defence systems in Transnistria. The US defence system, which should be operational in 2015, is designed to protect Eastern Europe from missiles launched in the Middle East. However, it is still perceived as a threat by Moscow.

 "A European future for Moldova" announces the headline in Moldovan daily Timpul, in the wake of the first round of negotiations on an association agreement between the EU and the former Soviet republic, which took place on 12 January in Chisinau. Billed as the "event of the year," the agreement will include provisions for greater economic assistance, closer political ties and the easing of visa restrictions. The terms of the deal, which is similar to one signed with Ukraine in 2005, "will set the tone for 2010 and encourage Moldovans to look forward to a resolutely European new year." The next round of negotiations will be held in March in Brussels. Timpul reports that "the negotiation process will continue regardless of the result of early general elections, planned for this spring."

On the front page of its 13 December edition, Moldovan daily Timpul leads with news of an "Anti-Semitic outrage in downtown Chisinau," which took the form of a demonstration involving several hundred people carrying "Orthodox flags, and brandishing hammers and sticks." Led by an Orthodox priest who claimed he was acting "to defend his homeland," the demonstrators destroyed a nine-branched menorah candelabrum installed in a public park in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which they then replaced with a wooden cross. The Moldovan Jewish community accounts for approximately 23,000 of Moldova's four-million strong population.

Do strategic partnerships serve any real purpose? Eight months after the launch of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) with the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine, the EU has little to show for its efforts. And while we are on the topic, what has become of the Union for the Mediterranean? When it was announced 18 months ago, we were told that it would bring together countries on both sides of the Mare Nostrum – a likely story. The Eastern Partnership has not become a household name, not even in Brussels. Of course, you could argue that European officials have been so preoccupied by the fate of the Lisbon Treaty that they have had time for little else. On the occasion of the first meeting of the EaP on 8 December in Brussels, foreign ministers of the 27 member states along with their six counterparts from the former Soviet republics were forced to admit that they did not have much to boast about apart from the hint of a possible U-turn in the attitude of Russia, which may now consider joining the initiative – but nothing really forward looking, and certainly nothing concrete. However, there was some hope that a deal to set up a European Investment Bank fund for lending to EaP countries which was sponsored by the Czech presidency of the EU could bear fruit in 2010. The fact that a Czech, Štefan Füle, has also been put in charge of the new Commission's portfolio for enlargement may also be significant. If he is to make progress, Mr Füle will have to convince the governments of several countries including Russia, that there is a point to the EaP, which Dmitri Medvedev described as "useless." So as not to hurt our feelings the Russian President was careful to add that the EaP is "not dangerous," as if we did not know that already. Let's hope that the reign of the new Commission will help the partners to overcome their fears and prejudices so that they can finally exert a positive influence on developments to the east of Europe's borders. I.B.G.

"We've moved closer to Europe," runs the headline in the Jurnal de Chisinau to announce the good news that for the first time since the end of World War Two, Moldovans will be celebrating Crăciun (Christmas) on 25th December rather than on 7th January. The Jurnal welcomes the decision by the government in Chisinau to adopt the date set by the Gregorian (Catholic) calendar instead of the one fixed by the Julian calendar (Orthodox), which has been in use ever since Moldova was annexed by the Soviet Union. “Now we can celebrate Christmas on the same day as all other European Christians,” rejoices the Moldovan daily, describing it as “another step towards the EU.”

100,000 new cases of HIV infection annually in Europe. Two million seropositive Europeans, 730,000 of them in the EU alone. These figures for the period from 2001–2007, published by European health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, “prove that the AIDS epidemic, far from receding, is actually steadily spreading, even in industrialised countries,” observes La Stampa.

Hence the European Commission’s decision to relaunch its information and prevention campaign. Its efforts will chiefly target Eastern Europe, where the problem is more acute: nearly one million Russians, 1.1% of the population, are infected. The object is to encourage HIV testing. In the European Union, 30% of the seropositives don’t even know they’ve contracted the virus and inadvertently continue to infect others. This figure is as high as 70% in some Eastern European countries, such as the Ukraine, Moldova and Russia.

On its front page, Timpul wonders: "Is the iron curtain on the Prut a thing of the past?" Now that a treaty on cross-border travel has been signed with Romania, the Moldovan daily delightedly reports that, "more than a third of the Moldovan population, that is more than a million people, will no longer need a visa to enter Romania." Given the official seal of approval on Tuesday 20 October in Chisinau, the treaty grants free access to Romania – and as a consequence to the European Union – to Moldovans living in counties along the common border between the two countries, marked by the river Prut. Residents of villages that are situated less than 30km from the border in both countries will be able to cross the Prut and travel up to 50 km. "It's a sign that we are finally beginning to normalize our relations with Romania and the EU," remarks Lurie Leanca, the Moldovan Minister for Foreign Affairs. However, the treaty will be subject to approval from the European Commission before it comes into force in late 2009.

A week after the termination of the visa requirement on the Romanian-Moldovan border, the number of people travelling between the two countries has increased by 40 %, reports Evenimentul Zilei. The Bucharest daily further explains that "the overturning of the communist regime, and the first change introduced by new pro-European government – the suspension of the visa requirement for EU citizens – have made Moldova very attractive to European companies."

According to the economists featured in the columns of Evenimentul Zilei, the new era heralded by these developments will be "a very promising one" for the state, which is thought to be Europe's poorest country. The EU is Moldova's main trading partner, but "Russia and Ukraine also have major interests in the market of the former Soviet republic." Now Romania and the EU will have the opportunity to make Moldova "an interesting destination for investors".