Moldova's pro-EU PAS wins parliamentary majority in election

Moldova's pro-European ruling party won a clear parliamentary majority in Sunday’s election, preliminary results and near-complete counts showed, delivering President Maia Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity a decisive victory in a ballot shaped by competing Western and Russian influence. With roughly half of the vote, the result leaves PAS positioned to form a government and press ahead with its bid for closer ties to the European Union.

Electoral commission tallies released after polls closed showed PAS receiving about 50 percent of votes cast, while the Russia-leaning Patriotic Electoral Bloc took roughly 24 percent. Turnout stood at just over 51 percent, with some 280,000 ballots cast at polling stations abroad. The distribution of seats in the 101-member parliament based on those results indicates PAS will hold an outright majority, removing the immediate need to build a coalition.

The election was widely framed within Moldova as a choice between deeper integration with the EU and a reorientation toward Moscow. Moldova, a country of about 2.4 million people that applied for EU membership in 2022 and was granted candidate status the same year, has seen politics polarized...