Hello everyone and welcome to E-Sype's political economy podcast. My name is Frederick Erickson, and I am very pleased to be joined today by my colleague Tenghis Prakalade, a senior fellow here here at Dysai, where he researchers, among other things,

economic and security policies in Eastern Europe. He is an academic with long experience from

top positions in Georgia's civil service, and he closely follows Euro-Atlantic issues in the region.

And this is what we're going to talk about today, namely, developments in

Moldova and Georgia, two countries on the path to membership in the EU, where important elections

recently have been held. Tenghis, welcome. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here.

So, Tenghis, the past two weeks have featured two quite important elections in Moldova and Georgia,

to put it mightly. Moldova has voted on its EU accession, and yesterday, we're reporting this on

November the 4th, I should say. So yesterday, the country also held a presidential election and seems to

have returned President Mayasandu for another four years in the presidency. Last weekend,

selection in Georgia, which officially re-elected the Georgian Dream Party, has been contested with

pretty clear evidence of voter fraud. And in both countries, what seems to have been on the ballot

is the question whether they should orient themselves to the EU and become full members of the

Union. Do you think, is that a fair description of the elections? And can you walk us through

what happened in them? Let's start in Woldova. Yes, I think that, no, that's quite a fair description of the situation,

both Georgia and Moldova. And though in Moldova, we had a referendum and election,

and in Georgia only election, Both cases are similar and related to those countries,

geopolitical orientation and EU integration.

Let's start with Moldova.

I think the Moldovan case was particularly important, especially considering the referendum and all the process and all the challenges my Asandu government face, including preliminary results, very concerning results, questioning the choice of Moldoian people.

Ultimately, Moldova adopted a European path and by congratulations. Though that was a very narrow merging in the referendum, favoring Europe,

Maya Sandu also faced significant kind of challenges in this election process, but she won.

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