Weekly Roundup

October 23 - 31 Part 1: Weekly News Roundup

Welcome back to Moldova Matters! In this weekly roundup we will check in with the top stories of the week in Politics and Economics. Subscribe to Moldova Matters to get our Weekly Roundup and other content sent right to your email! And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!

Welcome back for Part 2 of this Weekly Roundup. In Part 1 we discussed the huge amount of news pertaining to the gas and energy crisis. In part 2, we’ll try and cover all the things we’ve missed while focusing so tightly on all things gas.  So we start with… Gas. Again. 

Since posting Part 1 on Friday Moldova and Russia have announced a deal on the provision of natural gas to Moldova this winter. So while we’re looking at non-gas related news today we have to start with this and briefly look at the results of the manic negotiations and other actions of the last week. 

Gas Crisis Resolved… for Now. 

Late Friday night it was announced that Moldova and Russia had come to an agreement to sign a 5 year gas purchase contract. The actual details of the agreement remain secret with Deputy Prime Minister Spinu saying that he will have a press conference on Monday to share more. What we do know, from the Deputy Prime Minister and the Russian press, is that Moldova will pay around $450 / thousand cubes of gas. This is around ½ the price Moldova was able to get on the open market from Europe and around two times the price Moldova paid last year. The pricing will vary according to a formula proposed by the Moldovan side and pegged to the market prices of natural gas and oil, but exact details are not yet reported. Mr. Spinu said clearly that no political concessions were made by Moldova and that absolutely nothing regarding Transnistria entered into the final agreement. He also said that Moldova agreed to conduct an external audit of MoldovaGaz in 2022 and on the basis of the findings of this audit discuss payments of historical debts with GazProm. 

On one hand, this resolution is very welcome as Moldova’s immediate energy security is safe for this winter. On the other hand, we have absolutely no insight into the full nature of these negotiations or the text of a final agreement. Civil society activists have been complaining loudly about this lack of transparency and what it might be concealing. For the moment, Moldova has gas. But the full cost of this conclusion remains unknown. 

Other Political News

While the gas crisis took up most of the political bandwidth for the week, 2 interesting bills made their way through parliament at the same time. Firstly, MP Dumitru Alaiba proposed a bill on the elimination of paper “Extras” documents for both companies and individuals. These documents attest to information such as company ownership and must be presented constantly to banks and other bodies in order to accomplish almost anything. The key problem is that while business owners must constantly order these documents, wait in line to get fresh versions that are only valid for 30 days… the information is already public and online updated in real time. The proposed legislation will eliminate this redundancy and simply allow everyone to use the information that is already on the internet. This bill stems from a proposal by the Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance AIM and is part of their legislative agenda for 2021 (full disclosure I am the President of the Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance and a businessperson who will be very happy not to run around to get these silly stamped papers again). 

Also in Parliament, MP’s passed in the 2nd reading a bill mandating public transparency for offshore registered companies operating in Moldova. Currently, the beneficial ownership of Moldovan companies is all public and can be viewed online via many websites. If a local company is owned by a foriegn company however the true ownership details are known to the government but are not made public. This bill will close this transparency gap and show publically all owners who have more than a 25% stake in the foriegn company. While this is a big step forward from a transparency standpoint it isn’t entirely clear how it will be implemented. Currently the government collects information on the final beneficial owners of companies but this is effectively just a sworn statement by the company’s director. In many jurisdictions, such as the United States, the actual ownership of companies is not public and the state cannot actually attest to it in any way. So while the Moldovan government will now make public what they know about company ownership it will likely remain possible for any nefarious actors to hide their ownership by simply lying on a form that would be impossible to verify even if someone wanted to. 

A Hot Week in the Culture Wars

This week the never ending attempts of the Socialist party and their allies to stir up a political culture war did not take a break due to the gas crisis but accelerated. Firstly, the Archbishop of Balti and various priests of the Orthodox church have announced their intention and desire to excommunicate PAS government officials responsible for ratifying the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women. The Archbishop has told his priests and parishioners that they should no longer pray for those in power. PAS party representatives responded suggesting that the priest use all their newfound excess prayer time to consider praying for the victims of domestic abuse. 

Meanwhile, a cultural controversy has exploded around a new monument put up in a park in Chisinau. This week, the Romanian Embassy and the Moldovan Minister of Defense unveiled a monument on the Day of the Romanian Army. The monument is inscribed with the words 

“To the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina by the Romanian troops."

Anyone who is passingly good at math will note that 80 years ago was 1941, indicating that the “liberation” being described was the invasion of Moldova by Romanian troops allied with Nazi Germany in WW2. This “liberation” resulted in mass atrocities committed by the Romanian Army as part of the Holocost in Moldova during which nearly the entire Jewish population of the country, formerly as high as 30% of the population in areas, was whipped out. Previously (some years ago) a monument stood on the same site highlighting Russian and Romanian comradery in arms during World War 1. 

The Russian Embassy was furious at this action and put out a statement saying “The symbol of the Russian-Romanian friendship in arms during the First World War in Chisinau was transformed into a 'monument' to the Nazi criminals of the regime of I. Antonescu. This is a blatant case of the glorification of Hitler's executioners (...). The memory of those responsible for the murders and torture of civilians and prisoners of war, pathetically hiding behind the “noble mission of liberating Bessarabia from Bolshevism,” 

It seems to me that they have a point. But the culture war has played online into a broader shouting match of who was worse, the Nazi Allied Romanians or the Stalinnist Soviet Union. Arguments like these don’t seem to have winners and give the distinct impression that everyone reading it loses. Did Romania know this would happen? Almost certainly. So it seems that they have entered the culture wars in Moldova too for some reason. 

COVID-19 Update

The COVID-19 situation in Moldova remains serious, but showed the first tentative signs this week of peaking and perhaps beginning to decline. The 7 day average was 1431 new cases per day and 42 deaths. As you can see on the charts deaths are still rising (an indicator that lags new cases by 2 weeks) but the case rate is falling somewhat. 

The Ministry of Health continues to take a hard line on employees refusing vaccination and has proposed a bill to Parliament, which passed in the first reading, to deny extra one time payments and bonus benefits to healthcare workers who die on the job while not vaccinated. 

Meanwhile, the Ministry rolled out new restrictions in a highly confusing and botched manner. On October 26th the Emergency Commission approved a new set of restrictions including the prohibition on festive events in restaurants or in private, that will take effect on November 8th. This includes parties, weddings, funerals and more. Additionally, all companies are instructed to vaccinate 95% of their workforce by the end of the year and holiday break is extended for schools in “Red Zone” communities for the next week. The confusion came when the Emergency Commission did not actually publish this document until October 28th. On October 27th, the Minister of Health, who chairs the Emergency Commission did an interview stating that no new restrictions were coming. So they signed them October 26th, denied they were coming October 27th, and published them October 28th. It’s hard to find a coherent communications strategy here. 

Another key issue with the restrictions, other than the communications aspect, is that they continue to give zero guidance on how private companies and state agencies should assure that 75% or 95% of their employees are vaccinated. You’re not allowed to fire unvaccinated employees and there are no sanctions under the law or via the emergency regulations. It seems this is just a sort of guidance phrased as a command. Parliament itself highlighted this when Speaker Grosu noted this week that 9 / 101 members of parliament and 25% of parliamentary employees are not vaccinated. The Speaker pledged to meet with these unvaccinated employees every week to try and talk them into it. Perhaps this is the mechanism being proposed by the Emergency Commission?

Meanwhile, at least one former member of parliament got the message. Igor Dodon *finally* got vaccinated this week with Sputnik V. He said that he remains opposed to compulsory vaccination but that it’s a good idea for everyone who can to vaccinate themselves. 

Crime and Corruption

The Constitutional Court this week ruled on a question from PAS MP’s on amending the constitution. The question at hand was whether it was possible to limit parliamentarian's immunity from prosecution in cases of corruption, abuse of power, illicit enrichment or money laundering. The Constitutional Court ruled that this was possible clearing the way for PAS to propose and parliament to vote on such an amendment. Currently, if prosecutors want to indict a member of parliament they must first present the case to the whole legislature which would vote on whether it can be brought forward. Parliamentary immunity will remain in the case that this amendment is passed but with exemptions for these crimes deemed as “national security threats.”

Ending on a High Note!

This week Moldovan dancers Gabriel Goffredo and Anna Matus won the world championship in Latin Dance in Leipzig Germany. Like many people I had no idea that there were such championships but apparently this dance duo has won the prize now for the 6th time. Congrats dancing champions!

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