Hello and welcome to the Centre for European Reform podcast, Unpacking Europe.

I'm Octavia Hughes, host of today's episode, and I'm joined by the

CER's deputy director, Ian Bond, and our senior research fellow, Jake Asakou. Today, we're discussing

two elections that took place in the last 10 days and have implications for the wider European

region. Georgians voted in parliamentary elections this past Saturday on October 26th and Moldovans voted

in the first round of presidential elections on October 20th, but the second round scheduled for this

coming Sunday. Kishinau also held a referendum on enshrining EU accession in the Constitution.

So, Ian and Jaker, before discussing what happened, what makes

the election so important? Well, let me kick off. First of all, both of these countries are

EU candidates, so they are on the road to accession, but going at different paces and

conceivably in the case of Georgia going in different directions. But they matter

because of their geography. Moldova is on the borders of Ukraine. It's a kind of backdoor to

Ukraine's Black Sea coast. Georgia in the South Caucasus is a transit route for oil and gas from

the Caspian Sea, which is an alternative supplier for

some European countries, at least, to Russia. And it's part of the so-called middle corridor

that leads from China across Central Asia to Europe bypassing Russia. So they're both kind

of geopolitically and geostrategically important

and they're countries where Russia and the West have been in competition for a long time.

But, Jaeger, you may want to add something to that. Yeah, I mean, just adding another perspective

for the significance of democracy locally for both elections,

because it is quite different for the two countries. In Moldova, I think what we are seeing

is a test, the first electoral test of a pro-Western government, which was elected after

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