Romania is a country extremely close to Moldova, you share the same language. How do you see the Republic of Moldova's European aspirations and its chances of success on this path?
Moldova in my mind is an easier case than Ukraine: it's a smaller country so it can progress faster. On the other hand, it is a more difficult case because Moldova is hostage of the Transnistrian problem. I have repeatedly said that Moldova faces an option: either to Europeanise or transnistrialise. Their fight for keeping the unity within borders invented by Stalin prevents them from progressing enough in terms of democracy, market economy and even in terms of national conscience.
My fear is that the current authorities want to create a nation of homo sovieticus and this is very sad. When they are challenging their Romanian origin they are not defending their state, because Romania does not pose any threat for the statehood of the Republic of Moldova. They are actually acting against their own cultural identity and since one needs a cultural identity, they will try to invent an artificial nation.
Wasn't it Stalin the one who invented the Moldovian language?
Absolutely. While the people in the Republic of Moldova are speaking Romanian they call it Moldavian. I have relatives in that area and we speak the same language, we have the same words in Romanian and in what they call 'Moldavian'. This is what annoys me very much, that a Stalinist concept meant to divide a cultural nation was used by accident by the EU. The big deal is that Moldavians have to acknowledge their identity, their national conscience - as they wish, nobody forcing them in any direction - but not as a Soviet nation, for which there is absolutely no basis.
I think we should give Moldova a European perspective and European means to progress, we should try to decouple Moldova's development from the Transnistrian crisis. Also, we should try to come to an agreement with Russia, because all frozen conflicts in the area are part of a single problem: the post-imperial/post-soviet global status of the Russian Federation.
Is Transnistria the reason why your country didn't recognise Kosovo ?
No. One of the European values is the rule of law, the rule of the right and not the rule of the might. This is fundamental in the EU. Those who are now acting in recognition of Kosovo are acting against the values of the EU, since such recognition of independence has no legal basis.
Romania is now defending these values, abandoned by other countries. Also to be underlined, as concerns Kosovo, its supporters claim that it is an independent country. One country can either be fully independent or not. One cannot say that Kosovo is a little bit independent and a little bit a protectorate, like one cannot say that a woman is a little bit virgin and a little bit pregnant at the same time.
If you are a little bit protectorate, you are a protectorate, and this is the current situation. That is why I think the solution to the existent problem is that Kosovo could become a subject of international law only when it is ready to become a member of the EU and only within the European Union.
What do you think about the recent extraordinary sessions organised by the EP Foreign Affairs Committee, AFET, like the one on Georgia?
I think that it is rather ridiculous to see that a committee with no legislative power is considered the most prominent committee, and it is also ridiculous to see that the less our powers to shape policy are, the more audacious our ideas are. I think it's a lack of common sense and it's weakening our capacity to influence.
Therefore I am scared, because our words carry a certain prestige, aura, political weight, and when listening to our rhetoric some people might ask if we have 'army divisions' behind us. We cannot shape the decision within the EU because, if you look at the statistics, nobody cares about our more audacious ideas, but in the rest of the world we are viewed as expressing the EU attitude.
I do not say that sometimes we do not have good ideas and very brave and visionary approaches. Indeed, it's the privilege of the Parliament to be more outspoken and therefore to stay closer to the principles. But on the other hand this capacity of the EP to be more outspoken carries with it the danger of being too emotional or superficial.
That is why we have procedures that would oblige us to give time to collect information, to listen to all sides and then come to a conclusion. This is what I have criticised recently regarding AFET activities, that we are starting to act like a rapid reaction force. We are not such rapid reaction force by our nature and we are never asked to take executive decisions. In spite of this, we see almost on a weekly basis 'urgent' issues, like the Georgian one.
What happened was indeed a bad development in this country but definitely not a 'war situation', as some claimed. We needed to show calm and not immediately jump in the old trenches of the Cold War. A balanced approach also involves listening to both sides, which did not happen. I don't think that we have to be conciliatory to Russia, but we shouldn't act like a Japanese soldier abandoned on an island and fighting a decades-long war after the conflict was long over.
