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Events from the year 2023 in Moldova.
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Events from the year 2023 in Moldova.
| Photo | Post | Name |
|---|---|---|
 | President of Moldova | Maia Sandu |
 | Prime Minister of Moldova | Natalia Gavrilița (until 16 February) Dorin Recean (from 16 February) |
| President of the Parliament | Igor Grosu |
Scheduled:
Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans. The country spans a total of 33,483 km2 and has a population of approximately 2.5 million as of January 2023. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country's eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Moldovan, archaically spelled Moldavian, is one of the two local names for the Romanian language in Moldova. Moldovan was declared the official language of Moldova in Article 13 of the constitution adopted in 1994, while the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Moldova used the name Romanian. In 2003, the Moldovan parliament adopted a law defining Moldovan and Romanian as glottonyms for the same language. In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova interpreted that Article 13 of the constitution is superseded by the Declaration of Independence, thus giving official status to the name Romanian. The breakaway region of Transnistria continues to recognize Moldovan as one of its official languages, alongside Russian and Ukrainian. Ukraine also continues to make a distinction between Moldovan and Romanian, with one village declaring its language to be Romanian and another declaring it to be Moldovan, though Ukrainian officials have announced an intention to remove the legal status of Moldovan. On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law.
Briceni is a city in northern Moldova. It is the seat of Briceni District.
The ȘOR Party was a populist political party in Moldova. Known from its foundation in 1998 until October 2016 as the Socio-Political Movement "Equality", the party held Eurosceptic and Russophilic stances.
The unification of Moldova and Romania is a popular concept in the two countries that began during the Revolutions of 1989. The Romanian Revolution in 1989 and the independence of Moldova in 1991 further contributed to the development of a movement for the unification of the two Romanian-speaking countries. The question of reunification is recurrent in the public sphere of the two countries, often as a speculation, both as a goal and a danger. Though historically Romanian support for unification was high, a 2022 survey during the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicated that only 11% of Romania's population supports an immediate union, while over 42% think it is not the right moment.
Modern Moldova-Romania relations emerged after the Republic of Moldova gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Pan-Romanianism has been a consistent part of Moldovan politics, and was adopted in the Popular Front of Moldova's platform in 1992. The official language of Moldova is Romanian. The peoples of the two countries share common traditions and folklore, including a common name for the monetary unit – the leu. At present, relations between the two states are exceptionally friendly, especially on account of the pro-Romanian administration of Maia Sandu in Moldova.
Moldova–Russia relations are the bilateral relations between the Republic of Moldova and the Russian Federation, two Eastern European, post-Soviet, ex-communist countries. Russian support for the self-proclaimed Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) and a substantial Russian military presence therein strained Moldovan relations with Russia.
Igor Dodon is a Moldovan politician who previously served as the President of Moldova from 23 December 2016 to 24 December 2020. He currently serves as the leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova. He served as Minister of Economy and Trade in the governments of Vasile Tarlev and Zinaida Greceanîi from September 2006 to September 2009 and was a member of the Parliament of Moldova from 2009 to 2016. He lost his bid for re-election in 2020 to Maia Sandu in a rematch whom he had defeated four years earlier in 2016.
Maia Sandu is a Moldovan politician who has been the President of Moldova since 24 December 2020. She is the founder and former leader of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) and former Prime Minister of Moldova from 8 June 2019 until 14 November 2019, when the government collapsed after a vote of no-confidence. Sandu was Minister of Education from 2012 to 2015 and member of the Parliament of Moldova from 2014 to 2015, and again in 2019. Sandu was elected President of Moldova in a landslide victory during the 2020 Moldovan presidential election. The first female president of Moldova, Sandu is a strong supporter of the accession of Moldova to the European Union, overseeing Moldova's granting of candidate status, and is considered 'pro-Western'. She has criticised and opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and supported subsequent steps to reduce Moldova's economic dependence on Russia, frequently expressing sympathy and support for Ukraine in the conflict. Sandu has made anti-corruption, economic reform and liberalisation a central part of her political platform, as well as closer integration with Europe. In February 2023, she accused Russia of seeking to stage a coup of the Moldovan government and has continued to seek to reduce Russia's influence over the country.
Ilan Shor is an Israel-born Moldovan oligarch and politician. From July 2015 to April 2019, he served as mayor of the Moldovan city of Orhei. He owns several Moldovan businesses, including a company named Dufremol (Duty-free) and the FC Milsami football club. In 2014, he became the chairman of the board of the Savings Bank of Moldova. Since 2019, he has been in exile in Israel after being convicted of fraud and money laundering. His political party reportedly seized the enclave of Gagauzia via embezzled money.
Events in the year 2017 in Moldova.
Andrei Năstase is a Moldovan politician serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs from 8 June 2019 to 12 November 2019. He was member of Parliament of Moldova in 2019. Năstase has been leader of Dignity and Truth Platform Party from 2015 to 2021.
Ion Ceban is a Moldovan politician, and the current mayor of Chișinău, Moldova's capital. He is also the leader of the pro-European National Alternative Movement party. Ceban was Vice President of the Moldovan parliament in 2019, and has served as a member of parliament in three legislatures. He also served as a leader of his party's faction in the Chișinău Municipal Council from 2015 to 2019. He has held different positions at the governmental level starting from the head of a department to Deputy Minister.
Presidential elections were held in Moldova on 1 November. The fourth direct elections since independence in 1991, voters had the possibility to either elect a new president or re-elect the incumbent Igor Dodon. Because no candidate received a majority of votes in the first round, a run-off between the top two candidates, Maia Sandu and Dodon, was held on 15 November. Maia Sandu won the second round with 57.72% of the vote, becoming the first female President of the country and the first winner from the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS).
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Moldova in autumn 2024.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Romania has supported Moldova on several occasions, supplying it with medical equipment and supplies, volunteer Romanian experts and doctors and even a series of COVID-19 vaccine units that arrived on 27 February 2021, which allowed Moldova to start its vaccination program.
COVID-19 vaccination in Moldova started on 2 March 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Moldova was very reliant on external help from other countries, having received donations of vaccines from Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China. In fact, Moldova's vaccination campaign started due to a donation from Romania on 27 February 2021 composed of 21,600 Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses, with the first vaccinated person in the country being Alexandru Botizatu. Romania had promised earlier, on 29 December 2020, that it would help Moldova with a collaboration project which would include 200,000 vaccine doses to help Moldova combat the pandemic, but also other matters of the country. Romania subsequently made more donations on 27 March 2021 with 50,400 vaccine units; on 17 April 2021 with 132,000 vaccine doses, fulfilling its promise to Moldova; and on 7 May 2021 with 100,800 vaccine units even though this surpassed the promised 200,000 vaccine doses.
The next parliamentary elections in Moldova are to be held no later than 11 July 2025.
Events from the year 2022 in Moldova.
On 18 September 2022, protests in Moldova began in the capital city of Chișinău, demanding the resignation of the country's pro-Western government, amid an energy crisis causing rising natural gas prices and inflation, caused in part by the war in Ukraine.