Moldova: the election Europe pretended not to be contesting
A year after winning 55 of 101 seats, Moldova’s government has already changed prime minister twice — and governs with energy under emergency and Transnistria as leverage.
A year ago Moldovans went to the polls with bombs falling across the Ukrainian border and the energy bill in their hands. PAS won — and won enough to govern. What has happened since explains why Europe treated that election as a technical procedure while Moscow treated it as a contest: the instrument of the contest was never the vote.
The official result of 28 September 2025 gave PAS 50.20% of the vote and 55 of 101 seats. A majority requires 51. That leaves four seats of margin, against the 63 seats of 2021 — and it is that erosion, not a formally unworkable majority, that explains what followed. The opposition took the Patriotic Electoral Bloc (26 seats), the Alternative Bloc (8), Our Party (6) and Democracy at Home (6). Turnout was 52.21%, and the diaspora — 277,964 votes across 301 polling stations in 45 countries, 78.61% of them for PAS — made the difference.
The government that would not stay upright
In ten months Moldova changed prime minister twice. Alexandru Munteanu took office on 31 October 2025, replacing Dorin Recean, and resigned on 3 July 2026 after eight months, saying he could not perform his duties according to his principles. Vasile Tofan was invested on 21 July 2026 with 53 votes — the opposition abstained or voted against — and promised to serve until September 2029 and to sign the EU accession treaty by the end of 2028.
The opposition is demanding early elections. The Socialist Party says the country “needs” them, and the MAN party filed a censure motion in July. No dissolution followed, and the regular calendar stands: new local elections and a local referendum in seven localities on 1 November 2026, the election of the Bașcan and the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia on 15 November, and the Transnistrian presidential election on 13 December.
Where the contest actually happened
On 31 December 2024, at 19:50, Russian gas stopped reaching Transnistria as the transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired. The region lost central heating, hot water and gas, industry halted, rotating power cuts began and the Cuciurgan plant switched to burning coal with announced reserves of about fifty days; three people died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The European Commission moved fast and with money: a €30 million emergency package in January 2025 — €20 million to buy gas destined for Transnistria, €10 million for electricity on the right bank — followed by a two-year strategy with €250 million of support in 2025 and a further €60 million offer for the Transnistrian region subject to conditions on fundamental rights.
There is the contest Europe declined to name as one: aid to Transnistria is Chisinau’s leverage over a territory Moscow treats as its own — and the conditionality on fundamental rights is the recognition that the money works as a political instrument, not as charity.
On the right bank, the change was structural. On 1 September 2025 state company Energocom replaced Moldovagaz — more than 60% owned by Gazprom — as gas supplier, after the regulator revoked the former operator’s licence. The country stopped buying electricity from the Cuciurgan plant, which supplied up to 80% of right-bank consumption, and began importing from Romania and Ukraine. In March 2026 Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure cut the Vulcănești-Isaccea line and the country lived through a month of energy emergency, with a deficit of up to 400 megawatts at peak hours.
Moldova changed supplier, route and price. It did not change geography — and geography is what sets the cost of every winter.
Winter as a political calendar
For the 2026-2027 heating season, Energocom has already purchased the entire volume planned from October to March and secured 76% of the gas year; the final price comes from a formula indexed to the TTF benchmark, and August 2026 gas was bought at €57.80 per megawatt-hour. The regulator set an obligation to store more than 140 million cubic metres by 1 November 2026 — and the country has no storage of its own, keeping it in neighbouring states.
The winter plan approved in September 2026 has 52 measures and two honesties worth noting: it provides for the commercial operation of the 400 kV Vulcănești-Chișinău line by the end of October and requires a plan, by 1 December, to manage a possible interruption of gas supply to Transnistria. In other words: the Moldovan government, which says publicly that reintegration will be peaceful, is formally preparing for the day the region’s pipeline stops.
Europe, on the other side, keeps the accession process on a technical track — a report in November 2025, Council decisions in June and July 2026 — while Moldova buys gas at market price. Energy sovereignty was achieved; the price is charged every month, in European currency, and will keep being charged as long as the country’s only high-capacity link with the Union is a line named after a city 100 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.