Romania Opposes Federal Solution to Moldova’s Transnistria Problem

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis urged Moldova not to pursue a federal arrangement as a solution to the problem of its breakaway region of Transnistria at a meeting with the President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, in New York on Wednesday.

The two presidents met on the sidelines of the 74th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Dodon and his pro-Russian Socialist Party have long mulled a federal arrangement along the general lines of the so-called Kozak Memorandum, formulated in 2003, which provided for a more powerful role for Transnistria in a reunited the country. The memorandum was named after the Russian politician and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who authored it.

The self-proclaimed republic broke away from Moldova in an armed conflict in 1992 as the Soviet Union dissolved and as former Soviet republic Moldova declared itself an independent state. Russia has supported the mainly Russian-speaking region ever since. By 2018, more than 220,000 Russian passports had been issued in Transnistria, meaning that half the citizens of the breakaway region are now Russian citizens.

Many in Moldova are wary of a federal solution to the problem, saying that giving Transnistria and its mainly pro-Russian voters a bigger political role in Moldova will tip the internal political balance in the country towards Moscow and draw Moldova from its European path.

"Iohannis stressed that from the perspective of Romania, it is important to avoid any solution that involves the federalisation of Moldova, or any other formula that would affect its pro-European vector," the Romanian presidential office said in a press release.

In response, Dodon assured his colleague that federalisation was not intended as a decisive...