Revisiting Transnistria in the Context of EU Enlargement: Evidence from 2022–2024

With Moldova’s EU accession process and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the unsolved status of Transnistria has once again become central to discussions of European integration and regional security. Yet how the European Union (EU) adapts its response to Transnistria under these new circumstances remains under-researched. As an excerpt from my PhD dissertation, which focuses on why the European Union adopts different stances towards post–Cold War European secessionist movements, this paper examines the EU’s attitude toward Transnistria and the decision-making considerations behind it, with a focus on the period 2022–2024. Based on one month of fieldwork in Tiraspol and Chisinau, this paper draws on existing literature and original data from around 18 semi-structured interviews with diplomats, decision makers, and experts from the EU, Moldova, and Transnistria. My case study confirms the relevance of the PhD dissertation by showing that the EU, as a normative power, is widely expected to act with a certain degree of coherence and adherence to underlying principles. Primary findings from Transnistria reveal how the EU’s stance toward the post-Soviet de facto state forms from its weighing of competing norms, including respecting the host state’s position, promoting Europeanization, reducing Russian influence, and the reluctance to take contested territories and conflicts into the Union. By taking the EU as the research subject, this paper contributes to both secession studies and EU foreign policy scholarship, shedding light on the emerging broader discussion of how international organizations (IOs) respond to regional secessionist movements, a crucial topic that has received little scholarly attention compared with the role of state actors in secessionist movements.