The European Union and Moldova on Tuesday agreed on an energy security plan aimed at weaning the country off its dependence on Russian supplies and integrating it into the 27-nation bloc’s network.
The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, said that Moldova would receive 250 million euros ($258 million) this year — 40% of it by mid-April — after Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom cut supplies on Jan. 1.
Daily electrical outages were imposed after hundreds of thousands of people in Moldova’s separatist pro-Russian Transnistria region were left without heating and hot water last month over an alleged $709 million bill for past supplies to Moldova.
The decision by Gazprom, which came into effect a day after a gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, halted gas supplies to Transnistria’s gas-operated Kuciurgan power plant, the country’s largest, which provided a significant portion of Moldova’s electricity.
The commission said that its financial package will provide support to consumers in Moldova – a candidate country for EU membership – to help pay their rising electricity bills. Some 60 million euros ($62 million) is earmarked for 350,000 people left in the cold in Transnistria.
Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.5 million people, was left entirely dependent on Moscow for natural gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but it has since pushed to diversify and expand its energy sources. The war also forced the EU to end its dependence on Russian energy imports.
It has faced pressure from Moscow to give up its westward shift of recent years.
Transnistria broke away from Moldova after a short war in 1992 but is not widely recognized.
