Is there a plan to unite Romania and the Republic of Moldova in order to admit Moldova to the European Union and NATO and have Moldovan President Maia Sandu run for president of Romania? No, that's not true: Moldova is a candidate for European Union membership, but there is no evidence of the two countries uniting and Sandu has categorically denied any intention of running for political office in Romania.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by user @5news.ro on December 28, 2023. The caption (translated from Romanian to English by Lead Stories staff) said:
Romania will unite with the Republic of Moldova because they made a Romanian Senator a Moldovan citizen, and then appointed her as Governor of the Moldovan Central Bank. The objective is to get Moldova into the EU and NATO, unite the two countries into one, and have Maia Sandu run as President.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jan 3 10:00:56 2024 UTC)
On December 22, 2023, Moldovan lawmakers confirmed (archived here) Romanian politician Anca Dragu as the country's new central bank governor after dismissing Octavian Armasu from the post the day before. Dragu, currently a member of Parliament for the center-right party Save Romania, was Romania's finance minister from November 2015 to January 2017. Dragu was sworn in as a Moldovan citizen on December 22, 2023.
Following an application by the Republic of Moldova in March 2022, Moldova was officially granted candidate status (archived here) by the European Union (EU) on June 22, 2022. Moldova has set the year 2030 as its target date for EU accession. In December 2023, the European Council decided to start accession negotiations (archived here) with Moldova.
Sandu stated in an interview with Politico (archived here) in January 2023 that there were "serious discussions" about joining "a larger alliance" after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although she did not specifically mention NATO, as the debate on NATO's eastward expansion has always been a sensitive issue, especially as Moldova borders Russia.
There is no indication that unification plans for Romania and Moldova are in the making. According to an opinion poll (archived here) conducted in Moldova in 2023, the majority of Moldovans (50.3 percent) do not want unification with Romania, but most (58.5 percent) are in favor of joining the EU. In Romania (archived here), only 33 percent believe that Moldova could unite with Romania at some point, and 54 percent of Romanians do not agree with unification. Sandu has categorically denied wanting to run for public office in Romania (archived here).
