Moldova and Ukraine’s European Union path for membership

a new strategy for Eastern borders Europeanization

Abstract

The war in Ukraine, which began in 2022, brought a geopolitical turn in the world order, and, more specifically in the case of the European Union (EU), the urgency in reviewing its foreign policy towards its borders. Geographically close to the EU, the Eastern neighbours have been on the EU’s radar in its search for cooperation or development-promotion initiatives, and the Union has been engaged in supporting their development since the transition towards democracy. Concomitantly, the region is also under Russia’s attention, and demographic issues stem from the reorganisation at the end of the Cold War, as the Russian diaspora living on the borders of new countries founded as liberal democracies oriented toward EU influence. Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova are two multiethnic countries having unsolved separatism issues and that have recently become a focus of territory disputes, even before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.