Moldova gets €254 million handout from EU; Pridnestrovie gets zilch

See of money: EU tries to paper over Moldova's internal contradictions with more cash handouts. No such luck for PMR.

CHISINAU (Tiraspol Times) - The European Commission will double financial aid to Moldova, allocating to it 254 million euros in 2007-2010. In allocating the handout, no strings are attached that any of the money has to be shared with residents east of the Dniester river.

In the past, Moldova has repeatedly claimed that Pridnestrovie is part of its territory. At the same time, the government in Chisinau has consistently failed to send any money to care for the lives of the more than half million people who live in what it is fond of calling its "eastern region."

The European Union said Tuesday it would more than double aid to non-member country Moldova over the next four years, handing over €209 million (US$277 million). It also annonced that it plans to give Moldova another €45 million (US$60 million) in 2007 and 2008 to bail it out of its current government debt problems, bringing total funding to €254 million (US$336 million) until 2010.

Ministers from the EU's 25 member nations need to sign off on this extra package before the donation is final. Reaction from Tiraspol has been mixed. On one hand, it doesn't care about how European taxpayer money is spent, considering it an internal matter for the European Union itself to decide. On the other hand, sources in parliament marvels at the chutzpah with which Moldova invokes the half million citizens of "Transnistria" when it comes to obtaining cash, but then conveniently ignores them when it comes to dispursing it.

Parliament asks: Is PMR a part of Moldova?

According to official Moldovan rhetoric, Pridnestrovie - or, as it calls it "our left bank region of Transnistria" - is part of Moldova.

In its latest census, which excluded Pridnestrovie, 3,383,332 people live in Moldova. When adding the 555,347-strong population in the area which Moldovan claims, but has no control over (Pridnestrovie), the total joint population comes to 3,938,679. It is this figure of nearly 4 million people which Moldova bases its financing requirements on when it requests European Union funding and money from other international organizations.

By this population figure, and official Moldovan rhetoric which - on paper, at least - makes Pridnestrovie part of Moldova, Pridnestrovie's population represents 14% of Moldova. Its territory represents 12%.

Of the €254 million now on the way, based on the population figure, that would mean that €36 million (US$47 million) should be earmarked for PMR's administration.

EU dispursements are, in theory at least, sometimes linked to human rights reforms, basic freedoms, the judicial system and the investment climate, which coincidentally are areas that the PMR parliament are already working on. Since 2001, Pridnestrovie has embarked on a reform program which intensified in 2005 when the parliamentary majority shifted to reform-minded opposition party Renewal. Moldova, meanwhile, continues to be dominated by a Communist Party government and has shown slow progress on basic reforms.

Since Moldova declared independence in 1991, one year later than Pridnestrovie, it has received EU aid to tune of 320 million euros. In the past two years alone, the generous gifts from EU taxpayers to this non-member country amounted to a whopping 83 million euros. None of this money has been repaid, and none of it ever found its way to the locally elected government of Tiraspol or the 14% of "its" population which Moldova claims to represent internationally.

De facto, Pridnestrovie instead functions as a fully sovereign country, with its own budget for government services that are independent of any connections with Moldova. For more than sixteen years, it has managed to provide basic services and food security to its population and has proven its economic viability as a separate, independent entity.

" - PMR has survived for all these years without support from Moldova or from the rest of the world," said a spokesman from the Rybnitsa-based steel works to Simon Reeve of BBC's Channel Four. "It has everything it needs to survive on its own, whether Moldova likes it or not."

See also:
» PMR's government spends $24M on roads, and not a dime from Moldova