Does Moldova Need Its Own Foreign Agents Law?

Victor ENI

If the Moldovan political elite really wants the state to remain sovereign and governable, the current legislative norms regarding the activity of non-profit structures will have to be revised

Since the second Maidan in Ukraine and the events in Belarus, the most notable public outrage in the post-Soviet space has been the desperate protests in Georgia. They were organized by local, pro-Western forces, most of them representatives of non-governmental organizations, in response to the adopted foreign agents law by the authorities. Our politicians, inspired by the scale of the protests in Tbilisi, nevertheless fail to grasp the main intention of the Georgian leadership – to strengthen the sovereignty of the state and weaken external influence. A comparative analysis of the non-governmental organization sector in Moldova and Georgia shows a number of similarities and differences. Both countries have a very large number of registered NGOs, although only a small part of them are proactive. A significant role in the structure of civil society belongs to NGOs, the most influential of which are those that deal with human rights, monitor the work of the government and electoral processes, as well as specialize in public opinion research and collection of large empirical data. In terms of the severity of similar laws on foreign agents in the United States or Russia, for example, the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) provides for penalties ranging from fines of $250,000 to imprisonment for up to five years for alleged violations. Unlike FARA, Russian legislation does not provide for criminal sentences for violators, only financial penalties. The Georgian version suggests to recognize as agents of foreign influence all non-profit organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20% of their annual income from foreign funding. In our case, the legislation is as liberal as possible. As a result, after three decades of independence, Moldova is entangled with a powerful network of non-profit and non-governmental organizations, which, in terms of the strength of their influence on the processes in the country, can hardly be classified simply as civil society. It is rather a structure of governance deeply integrated into the state, parallel to the existing one. Everyone knows that the expansion into the political sphere and the creation of the PAS party headed by the current president, Maia Sandu, is the result of many years of NGO work in Moldova. The overwhelming number of members and especially the leading staff of the political organization started their careers by working in various NGOs financed by European and American funds. Therefore, since PAS came to power, state institutions have been overcrowded with either officials from the non-governmental sector or advisers from there, who are constantly monitoring and adjusting national policies in almost all spheres. Today, a total of about 15,000 different NGOs operate in our country. Being externally financed, they openly interfere in internal political affairs, election campaigns and are able to exert a decisive influence even on top-level Moldovan politicians. As the experience of post-Soviet states proves, it is with the help of NGO activists, who are, in fact, the embodiment of the “fifth column” concept, that massive propaganda attacks, large-scale protests and riots are organized. By infiltrating state institutions, they contribute to decision-making not in the interests of the country, but rather of transnational structures, which yesterday (and perhaps even today) had these “civil activists” on their payroll. The example of PAS clearly shows how former NGO leaders can impose an agenda completely alien to the state, directing the work of the entire governmental system towards the solution of strange geopolitical tasks that have nothing to do with Moldova’s national interests. Such a method of governance has led the country almost to the disaster, and the state has become less united and extremely divided. Initially, non-profit organizations actively financed socially important projects such as programmes to support vulnerable groups of the population. But over time, the humanitarian orientation of their activities changed and they began to actively infiltrate strategic areas of state administration, such as the justice system. As a matter of fact, the current authorities have almost completely outsourced the reform of this sector to NGOs. Judging by a chain of high-profile scandals, they failed miserably, but they have ensured and continue to ensure political control over the judicial system. In the traditional sense, non-governmental organizations provide the necessary expertise and help the state to make optimal decisions. In our case, in recent years, NGOs have become virtually a state within a state, obtaining competences and powerful capabilities, broad involvement in state institutions, and solid support from major foreign capitals. The situation in Georgia clearly shows how widely and deeply the agents of foreign influence are embedded and how strong the positions of non-governmental structures are that try to influence the state policy and lawmaking process. At the same time, any attempts to weaken the established mechanisms of the Western non-governmental influence instantly become reason for sanctions and other pressure, up to the street change of constitutional authorities. As a matter of fact, based on the experience of Georgia, we can roughly imagine how the West will react if the PAS regime is dethroned, who will take to the streets in its support, and what emissaries will visit Chisinau to keep the Moldovan politicians loyal to Western capitals afloat. In 2017 our authorities already tried to tighten the legislation and ban foreign funding of NGOs involved in political life. By the way, the amendments to the law were proposed after Moldovan human rights activists harshly criticized the change in the country’s electoral system. However, under the pressure of those very non-governmental structures, they were simply abandoned. Only in 2020, after long disputes, the law on NGOs was adopted, as it was one of the conditions for receiving the EU macro-financial assistance. The hastily adopted bill absolutely contradicted the interests of Moldova and further unleashed the hands of non-governmental organizations, including the possibility of receiving funding from abroad for their use, including in the political life of the country. Certainly, we should not expect the current authorities to tighten national legislation or increase control over the NGO activities. After all, the existing regime is derived from the non-governmental sector. However, if the Moldovan political elite is really interested in preserving the sovereignty and governability of the state, rather than in, say, the destructive tortures to which the justice system, the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office have been subjected in recent years, then the current legislative norms on the activity of non-profit structures will have to be revised.