Sergiu Mișcoiu: Polish-Romanian relations have a solid base for development
Interview with the Romanian foreign policy expert on the elections in Moldova, Romania, USA, Polish-Romanian ties and the Three Seas Initiative
Sergiu Mișcoiu is an expert in international relations and also specialises in issues related to Romania and Moldova. He is Professor of Political Science at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and Director of the University’s Centre for International Cooperation. He is also an expert not only on Romanian and Moldovan issues, but also on France and the French-speaking world.
The interview took place on 2 November 2024, the day before the second round of the presidential elections in Moldova and a few days before the American presidential elections.
Last time we observed some processes in Moldova and in Georgia related to the elections in these countries. There was a presidential election in Moldova and a parliamentary election in Georgia. Let us focus on Moldova because it is more related to Romania. Could you tell us how this situation in Moldova is now seen in Romania?
Hello Piotr. First of all, thank you for having me. The question is very interesting, because it touches on an important aspect, which is the following.
Like the other Western European countries, and I’m pretty sure this was the case in Poland as well, in Romania we were in a kind of bubble regarding the elections in Moldova. We were under the impression that the pro-European majority was doing well, that most Moldovans were on the road to 2020, and that public opinion was generally very favourable to European integration and, let’s say, not necessarily happy, but rather neutral or semi-satisfied with the government’s policies. We lived under this impression precisely because we were very close to the Moldovan elites.
Most of the people in the Moldovan government were educated in Western schools, and there was a high degree of compatibility between the European elites and the leaders of Moldova after 2020, and especially after 2021 with the new majority of the PAS party. This created a kind of misunderstanding. On the one hand, we wanted to believe that things were as we described them. On the other hand, we were not very eager to find out otherwise. Meanwhile, research on the ground showed that many people were quite dissatisfied, especially after February 2020, because the socio-economic conditions of the population had worsened. This led to a protest vote in Moldova in the first round of the elections, but also during the referendum.
We didn’t want to hear all this because it contradicted our own analysis, and therefore we couldn’t directly prevent what could have happened, which was the fact that, if we take only the population living in Moldova, in the country itself, the majority was not in favour of the referendum. It was necessary for the diaspora to vote in order to tip the balance in favour of a yes to the referendum, and at the same time the number of votes between Maia Sandu and the addition of the pro-Russian or neutral bloc is not really very strong in favour of the first. There may be a majority, but it is much weaker than we think.
The realities of the country, and I think this is a lesson for political scientists, sociologists and so on, have to be observed, analysed on the ground, even if they are painful, even if they contradict what we can expect as militants, as followers of a certain political-democratic-liberal path. So, even if we are pursuing the right objective, we have to be more aware of the fact that the reality on the ground is not close to the reality we dreamed of.
In this case, it’s quite obvious that a substantial part of Moldovan society did not support the project of Moldova’s European integration, precisely because it was disconnected from the policies of emancipation, development and growth that were being promoted in the press.
That’s why the second round, which will take place on Sunday 3 November 2024, is really close, and of course there will also be parliamentary elections next year, and only the second round here and the parliamentary elections with their results could decide the fate of Moldova in the long term.
Can I also ask you about the issue of the referendum on the EU? Most Moldovans voted in favour of joining the European Union, but it is a small majority. About 50.5% of the people voted for the EU and the difference between the supporters and the opponents is about 14,000 people. Do you think that the results of this referendum will help Moldovans to join the European Union or could there be some obstacles?
Well, I think the referendum was seen by many as a way of punishing the incumbent government. That was not seen in the Romanian press or in the Western press, but that was the reality. Many people, even some of those who partially supported Moldova’s pro-European path, were undecided. And those who didn’t care too much saw it as a good opportunity to take on the incumbent government.
This lesson has now been learned, as the government has been reshuffled and there will be further changes in Moldova’s political system as a result of these results. But it is a little late. Disaster was averted, once again, thanks to the massive vote of the Moldovan diaspora, especially the Moldovan students, who were very well mobilised in Romania, Germany, France and elsewhere, and who voted overwhelmingly in favour of Yes. But it was also an opportunity for many of the pro-Russian or vaguely neutral forces to show that, contrary to what is said in Moldova, we don’t have a pro-European majority. It is a controversial statement, because apart from what we know objectively and what has already been discussed here in terms of popular discontent, which has translated into a simple vote against the European path, we also have massive Russian propaganda, activated through a variety of tools, from trolls, bots and other online techniques, to very classic techniques of bribery, sending money and other such things. These techniques have been discovered and documented by the authorities and by some of the observers, while some of them are still completely obscure even to the journalists and to the other politicians. And it has worked, especially for those sections of the population that are very dependent on public subsidies in order to survive physically in a country with a very low or average income for the population.
So we had the combination of these two elements, the objective dissatisfaction of the population and, on the other hand, the radical attitude and the active influence of pro-Kremlin networks. And this led to almost a draw in the referendum, with, let’s say, some consequences that in the long term, I would say, could not be so disruptive, but could even be positive for the pro-European governments, because if Maia Sandu is re-elected, if the elections next year will bring a pro-European majority, then I’m pretty sure that the mistakes made in the 2024 period will not be repeated as such, thanks to this painful lesson of the referendum and the first round of the presidential elections in 2024.
You said that these presidential elections can have an influence on the parliamentary ones next year, and we will also observe this process and hope that Moldova will be closer to the European Union. But also in terms of elections, there are and will be another ones closer to the west, I mean Romania and Bulgaria. There is also an upcoming presidential election in Romania. How do you see it and what directions will be dominant in Romanian foreign policy? And also, if there will be, and how do you see the development of the relations between Romania and Moldova?
Well, in Romania things are more difficult to predict than before, because there is a gem of candidates with around 20%. The configuration of the second round of the presidential election is not clear and therefore it is very difficult to predict what could happen.
There are basically two scenarios. The first is that the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Marcel Ciolacu, the incumbent Prime Minister, will go through to the second round. He is leading in the polls with the representative of the far right, George Simion, and in that case Ciolacu will be sure to win in the second round and the Social Democrats will have a better chance in the parliamentary elections that will take place between the two rounds of the presidential election on the 1st of December.
And there is a second scenario in which Ciolacu goes into the second round with another candidate, either the former NATO deputy secretary-general Mircea Geoană, who is independent but also part of the Social Democratic Party network, or another candidate such as the centre-right reformist Elena Lasconi or the Liberal candidate, Nicolae Ciucă, who is not doing very well in the polls. In this case, there is also a greater possibility that Ciolacu could be defeated, because all the others are joining forces to prevent the election of a social-democratic president, to prevent control of the institutions, and in this case there are several scenarios for the new parliamentary majority.
So the first round of the presidential elections will have a strong impact on the parliamentary elections a week later, and this will also reshape the odds for the second round. But in any of these scenarios, it seems that Romania’s European path will continue. All the eligible candidates, apart from the far-right candidate who has a chance of making it to the second round but not of winning, are pro-NATO, pro-European.
They are close to Moldova and they support Romania’s stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so we cannot expect many changes in relations with Moldova. What could happen is that, for example, if the Social Democrats are in greater control of the institutions, they may be less committed to the Ukrainian cause, and this will implicitly divert attention to Moldova. But the changes will not be dramatic at all, because there is a consensus about Romania’s pro-European path.
This is not the case in Bulgaria, as we know. There we have the seventh election in four years, with a high level of democratic fatigue and with a lot of non-European forces, not to say even some pro-Russian or neutral forces, with considerable political support from the population. This could lead to changes in the government’s line on NATO, the EU, the war against Ukraine and so on.
So in the case of Romania, whoever comes to power, with the exception of the extreme right, it’s a case of a continuation of the previous policy, while in Bulgaria there’s a risk of decoupling, if there’s a majority formed by the non-European parties, let’s call them that because they’re very ambiguous, they’re not really very Eurosceptic, they’re not really anti-European, they’re somewhere in the middle and they cultivate a lot of ambiguity. And of course these two scenarios are very different.
So let me continue to ask, also focusing on the elections. I would like to ask about the Schengen zone, which Romania and Bulgaria want to join. They joined it partially this year, in March, when it comes to flights, but they want to have full access to Schengen, to the European Union. As an analyst for Central and Eastern Europe, I also perceived the great interest [in the region] that when it turned out that in December 2022, Romania and Bulgaria wouldn’t join the Schengen zone. But there was a change the next year that the European Commission agreed to give partial membership to Romania and Bulgaria in this aspect. But I’m very curious whether this issue, the Schengen zone, is still present in Romanian and Bulgarian politics. Is it emphasised in the elections there? What can you tell us about this?
In Romania, both the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, which have been governing together on a rotating basis since the autumn of 2021, have tried to take credit for the partial entry of the country with the airspace into the Schengen area, and both have tried to more or less blame the other coalition party for the failure of Romania’s full entry into the Schengen area. In Bulgaria, the situation is much more complicated because there have been many governments and none of them could take full credit for the accession to Schengen and no majority could be blamed for the partial failure.
Nevertheless, in both countries it is an issue that is being speculated about by the Eurosceptic forces, by the extreme right, by the populists, who say that we are very far from achieving this goal, and the governments in both countries have been accused of not having put enough pressure on Austria, and also on the European institutions, so that the two countries could join Schengen more quickly.
So it’s a topic that’s not as hot as it could have been, because there’s also a lot of fatigue about Schengen. It has been over-discussed in public and people are unhappy, but they are also a bit tired of the discussion. And it’s a bit of ammunition for the anti-European forces who are trying to speculate a lot about it in order to get ahead.
So we will also be watching this issue and how it will develop in the coming weeks and months. As a Polish analyst, I’m particularly interested in economic relations. I see that our countries – Poland and Romania – are economic tigers in Europe and both have developed very fast in the last 20-30 years. I also notice that Romania is getting higher and higher because of its economy and its importance within NATO. And it could be seen that Romania is more advanced than Bulgaria on some issues, which both of them joined the European Union in 2007.
I also see that relations between Poland and Romania have intensified in recent years. They are developing, among others, in the field of culture. The first Polish-Romanian Cultural Festival 2024-2025 will take place until October next year. The economic trade between Poland and Romania is also growing. There are also the issues of our cooperation within the Three Seas Initiative, where Romania, together with Poland, is one of the founders of the Three Seas Initiative Fund. The Bucharest Nine Group has also been continued, where Romania and Poland were the founders of this regional format.
These examples show the development of Polish-Romanian relations in different dimensions. Perhaps they are not as big as the relations of Poland and Romania with other countries, for example, Poland with Germany and Romania with France. But the intensification of Polish-Romanian interaction is very visible.
In this context, do you think there could be competition between Poland and Romania in some aspects? For example, sometimes investors have to choose whether to invest in Poland or Romania. Sometimes they choose Poland, sometimes they choose Romania. And these two countries are becoming more and more important not only in the economic aspect, but also in NATO, in cooperation with the United States and with Germany.
How do you see these relations in the coming months and years? Do you see any potential rivalry between our countries?
Yes, that’s a good question. You know, the two countries started from very different perspectives. Poland was a champion in Europe from the very beginning of the transition. Together with the Czech Republic, Poland broke away from Slovakia, and together with Hungary they created the Visegrad area. And it seems that these three countries moved much faster and more decisively than Romania, Bulgaria and other states that had a very ambiguous transition, especially in the 1990s. So Romania had a very important delay in reforms and had a lot of catching up to do compared to Poland.
But since 2005-2006, with ups and downs, Romania has done its best to catch up. And now, when there are problems in Hungary, with the sovereignist regime of Viktor Orban, with the attitude of Fico in Slovakia, Poland and Romania have become a pulse of stability, especially after the end of the Law and Justice adventure in Poland.
Romania used the fact that there was a conservative right-wing government in Poland, which had its own way of being sovereign, especially in its relations with the European Union. Romania used the opportunity of being the only really pro-European state in the region, with a strong commitment to NATO and the European Union, to catch up a little bit.
So I would say that today the two countries are in a position to share the same interests, the same values, which are Euro-Atlantic, the same fears about the Russian Federation and the threats from the East. And because of that, they have a commonality of thought rather than rivalry. I wouldn’t say that these countries are rivals.
You see that Poland has an opening to the Baltic Sea and the northern part of Central and Eastern Europe, while Romania has an opening to the Black Sea and this way to the Mediterranean, and also controls the routes to the Balkans, at least partially. So Romania has its own set of problems. But also its own set of opportunities. So, of course, if an investor wants to set up in Central and Eastern Europe, he could choose between the two countries. But investors, as we know, also choose Slovakia or Hungary, not because they are really very passionate about democracy, liberalism and the accountability of regimes, but rather they are interested in what economic conditions are offered and what tax advantages are offered.
That’s why I think it’s more the case that Poland and Romania are joining forces in initiatives like the Three Seas Initiative in such a way that they present the whole area as one of consolidation and stabilisation. Both countries are agents of stabilisation in the wider region, but also in other parts of the world, in Africa or Central Asia and so on. And I don’t really see them as rivals.
I think it would also be childish to cultivate this rivalry, because the two countries are not small, of course, but they are still small compared to the world champions, China, Brazil and other countries in the world. So I think that the governments of these countries are really aware that we need to stick together in order to present the Central and Eastern European business card, which is convincing and interesting, and not to fight over certain issues in order to attract foreign investors in a timely manner. And as you say, I think the relations today are perhaps among the best that distant neighbours, because we don’t have a common border, but distant neighbours in Europe in general, have.
In terms of the development in Poland and Romania, particularly in Romania, I mentioned earlier, and you developed this issue about the Three Seas Initiative, the infrastructure cooperation format in Central and Eastern Europe between 13 states from Estonia through Austria to Greece. Could you tell us what are the biggest challenges in the development of Romanian infrastructure, which can also determine the further development of Romania? What is the current Romanian government’s attitude towards the Three Seas Format?
I think that the Three Seas format was seen as an important way to show the strength of the region and also to show that this region is important in many ways, much more important than it was before. Now, for Poland, under the peace regime, it was also a way of deflecting criticism from the European Union, even from the United States, about the kind of regime that was being established at the time. In the case of Romania, it was a trampoline to enter the league of serious, strong, stable states.
So it was very interesting for both governments to connect with Poland and to draw the attention of the West to the same set of problems and opportunities that this region has. Let’s say that the geostrategic dynamic has been underlined once again by the Russian attacks on Ukraine on 22 February. And I think more needs to be done to consolidate the partnership at such a high level, so that there’s also greater, let’s say, infrastructure integration.
One of the things that was at stake was the corridor between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and the Baltic and the Nordic Seas, the Atlantic and the Nordic Seas. And that this energy to create, to strengthen cooperation to build strong infrastructures in this area is, let’s say, less pronounced than it used to be. So I think this is an issue that needs to be emphasised and this initiative needs to be revitalised in a more concrete way also on these issues.
Otherwise, there is a danger that the Three Seas Initiative will dilute itself, that it will become a kind of Visegrad abyss and that it will be less objectively strong than it should be.
The Three Seas Initiative is mainly the regional format in Central Europe that focuses on infrastructure. Sometimes, I also notice a very weak knowledge of some nations between them, for example, Poles about Romanians and also in the opposite direction, like Romanians about Poles, or Slovenians about Estonians, and so on. There are many other combinations of Three Seas nations whose bilateral social ties are weak or even very weak.
It also depends on which country we take into consideration, yes, but in general it is at this level. When I said to you that we now have the opportunity to talk to each other, me as a person from Poland, you as a Romanian expert in international relations, and I’m curious, how are Poland and Poles perceived in Romania today, and has it changed in comparison to recent years or not?
I think that the overall image of Poland in Romania is very positive. For a long time it was a kind of model, even a kind of dreamland, especially at the end of the 1990s when Romania was facing the crisis. Because, as you know, Romania was one of the countries where reforms were postponed.
In Poland, you had shock therapy for a couple of years, but it paid off in the longer term because it allowed for a rapid transformation of the Polish economy and society. In Romania, on the other hand, these reforms were very slow and the real crisis came at the end of the 1990s, the beginning of the 2000s. So, yes, during this period, Poland was seen as an example of good practice, integrating into the European Union earlier than Romania, into NATO even before that, and with a clear way of organising its society and regulating its conflicts.
While Romania, of course, lagged far behind. This rather positive image of the Poles is still present in Romania. Even during the more difficult years of the successive Law and Justice governments and their various conflicts with the European Union, this image suffered a little.
One of the most significant moments was when Donald Tusk came to Bucharest when Romania took over the presidency of the European Union for the first time. He delivered the speech in the Romanian parliament in Romanian. I think that was to a large extent the culmination of this positive image that the Romanians had of the Poles and of Poland in general, that it was modern, let’s say, cosmopolitan and so on.
These elements encourage the path of cooperation at many levels, local, regional and so on. I think we have to emphasise this in Central and Eastern Europe, because in the early 1990s all these countries had a different horizon. They were not looking to the former communist bloc, where relations between Romanians, Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians and so on were obligatory because they were the only possible international relations. They looked directly to the West, and for a long time that direction had nothing to do with intra-regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe. I think that since the late 2010s, but especially now in the 2020s, there is much more attention being paid to intra-regional cooperation. And because of the lack of historical disputes between Romania and Poland, the Romanians’ perception of Poland and the Poles is increasingly positive.
Many things could be done, could be concretised in bilateral relations, based on this lack of hatred, first of all, and then on positive appreciation, especially, I think, from the Romanian side. But I think that this is also increasingly the case on the Polish side.
I can also add that Romania and the Romanians are being perceived better and better in Poland, and it’s great that it works together. Let’s hope that these relations will continue to develop. Last but not least, I would like to ask you about one current and very important issue, referring to the presidential elections in the United States.
Do you see similar attitudes in Romanian society towards both candidates, I mean Donald Trump and Kamala Harris? Or is it perhaps more complex? How do Romanians see future cooperation with the US if Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, one of them, wins?
Yes, well, I think that in Romania, as elsewhere, the population is divided between, let’s say, the options of the two candidates. The main difference is the position of the two candidates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because Romania and the Romanians are afraid that if Donald Trump is elected, the support for Ukraine will be weaker and we may become, like the Poles, direct neighbours of the Russians.
Okay, Poland is already a neighbour of Russia with Kaliningrad, but Russia is pushing through Belarus. However, if Ukraine is defeated, there will be much greater pressure from the east and this is what the Romanians fear. So they would support any configuration of American policy which, on the one hand, defends our cause, the European cause, together with Ukraine. That’s the majority of Romanians.
Then you have a lot of conservative thinkers in Romania, a lot of milieus that are closer. For example, we have the neo-Protestant American milieus with different factors of influence in the United States, very conservative influence in the United States. And they are echoing the criticism of Kamala Harris from the Republican side. So even if things are divided, and even if it wasn’t for the war in Ukraine, I think things would have been even more balanced, or maybe many Romanians would have been more sympathetic to Donald Trump than to Kamala Harris. Because it’s still a socially and culturally quite conservative country.
Nevertheless, the geopolitical arguments and the idea that Trump will abandon Eastern Europe and focus on something else, maybe competition with China and so on. Add to that, of course, the reasonable level of personal antipathy towards Donald Trump himself as an individual, and you have a majority, and I would say a larger majority, of Romanians leaning towards Harris rather than Trump.
That’s an interesting observation and also conclusions about the upcoming elections in the United States and also other issues. We started the discussion about the elections in Moldova, and then we went more to Central Europe, I mean some issues related to Romania and Poland. And also about our cooperation within some regional formats and some bilateral forms.
Having listened to your perceptions and conclusions, I also see that we have the more in common, yes, not only the regional cooperation, the cultural or economic cooperation within NATO, but also the European Union, as you first said. It is also seen by the attitude towards the war in Ukraine and the invasion done by Russia there, and some other related to disinformation. We also observe that these last issues haven’t been analysed so directly. But we see that our countries, Poland and Romania, have a lot in common, more than we can imagine. Finally, I would like to thank you for this interview.
Photo: Warsaw (source: Pixabay, CC0)
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