Moldova’s September 2025 elections will be most consequential in its history, Sandu tells EP
The upcoming parliamentary elections in Moldova on September 28 will be the most consequential in its history, the country’s President Maia Sandu told the European Parliament on September 9.
The outcome would decide “whether we consolidate as a stable democracy” or whether “Russia pulls us away from Europe” – turning Moldova into a threat on Europe’s eastern frontier, Sandu told MEPs at a plenary sitting in Strasbourg.
Sandu’s pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity won Moldova’s previous parliamentary elections in 2021, while in the September 2025 parliamentary elections, there are concerns that Russian-backed disinformation is seeking to sway the result the Kremlin’s way.
Sandu said that Moldova’s lesson, and its warning, is that “if our democracy cannot be protected, then no democracy in Europe is safe.”
On the EU accession process, she said that many current EU countries were not complete democracies when they joined the EU.
The same countries had fought dictatorships and overcome economic hardships, and “none of them did it alone”.
Sandu said that for Moldova, EU accession is not just a technocratic process, “it is a race against time – to anchor our democracy inside the Union, where it will be protected from the greatest threat we face: Russia.”
She also spoke of Moscow’s unlimited hybrid war, “on a scale unseen before the full invasion of Ukraine”.
“The Kremlin’s goal is clear”, she said, “to capture Moldova through the ballot box, to use us against Ukraine, and to turn us into a launchpad for hybrid attacks on the European Union.”
“That is why this election is very important. By defending it, we protect not only Moldova, but also regional security and stability…Moldova may be the testing ground. But Europe is the target,” Sandu said.
She said that Europe has endured – by adapting, rebuilding and turning fragility into strength. By protecting fragile democracies until they grew strong.
“The only way forward is to defend our democracies with teeth – and to defend them together,” Sandu said.
(Photo: © European Union 2025)
