Assesing the Role of EU Actorness in Adressing the Endurance of Contested Statehood in the Republic of Moldova

The case of the Republic of Moldova constitutes the focus of this research due to its experience of enduring contested statehood in the context of the Transnistrian conflict. I seek to make an insightful contribution across different strands of scholarship dealing with Europeanisation, contested statehood, and EU actorness in conflict resolution and state-building. I argue that the interplay between domestic political evolutions in both the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria in the context of alternative external influences in the near abroad has prompted the emergence of distinctive reactive and pro-active mechanisms for the exercise of EU actorness. In distinguishing these mechanisms I focus on analysing the evolution of European Neighbourhood Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy tools in Moldova. In support of the overall argument I firstly propose a nuanced understanding of the empirical evidence with regards to the dynamics of contested statehood in Moldova over the past twenty years by using qualitative data that captures the variation in interactions between metropolitan and de-facto state over time. Then I outline a framework that conceptualizes this empirical evidence as a shift among different types of political order that encompass the structuring and distribution of governance authority between metropolitan and de facto state in the aftermath of unresolved secessionist conflict . Throughput this paper, I assess the role of opportunities, presence and capabilities in shaping each type of political order in order to highlight the distinctive mechanisms of EU actorness in adressing the endurance of contested statehood in the Republic of Moldova.