ABSTRACT
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was designed to address security, political and economic challenges at the EU’s borders by strengthening relations with its eastern neighbours. As the EU Global Strategy asserts, it is in the EU’s interests to invest in the resilience of states and societies – the ability of states and society to reform, or to withstand and recover from internal and external crisis (European External Action Service 2016). Moldova, a tiny country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, with no previous existence before 1991, has progressively generated security-and stability-related concerns in Brussels. This country has been suffering from an unresolved conflict in the East (Transnistria), weak and corrupted state institutions and organised crime at the EU border, thus undermining the EU’s security.
