Moldova can compete successfully for investment through speed, agility and trust rather than the size of its market, Prime Minister Vasile Tofan told 650 delegates from 50 countries at the opening of the eleventh Moldova Business Week in Chisinau on September 28.

"We will never win through the size of our domestic market, but we can win through speed, agility and trust," the prime minister said to businesspeople who had made the trip to see if Moldova is a viable investment destination in Europe’s changing dynamics. "We can quickly bring the right people to the table, change a bad regulation when necessary and rapidly test solutions at the national level."

The pitch was for Moldova as a regional base rather than a destination market. Tofan named IT, industry, energy, infrastructure, logistics, healthcare services, pharmaceuticals and tourism as the sectors with growth prospects, and framed the government as an intermediary rather than a gatekeeper.

"I invite you to take Moldova seriously. Bring capital, bring technology, build factories and infrastructure, develop services and use the Republic of Moldova as a base in the region, while the government will be your advocate in this process," he said.

The offer rests on political stability and the European path, he argued, which together give Moldova a window to accelerate economic reform as part of its bid to join the EU. Government priorities are reducing bureaucracy, speeding up procedures, ensuring a predictable fiscal framework, improving infrastructure and building an administration that supports business and job creation.

Geopolitical risk

Whether that window stays open is not entirely in Chisinau's hands. Seven days before the conference opened, Moldova's National Security Council met under President Maia Sandu and agreed that the government should ask parliament for a state of emergency in the energy and hydrological sectors, citing risks to electricity, gas and fuel supplies and a sharp deterioration in flows on the Dniester river.

The country imports most of its electricity and is entirely dependent on imported petroleum products and natural gas. Contingency measures approved on September 21 included keeping alternative import routes open, the potential emergency use of the 110 kV interconnections with Romania, building emergency stocks of petroleum products and stockpiling spare parts for rapid intervention. Institutions must report back by December 15.

The war is the more immediate variable. Moldova recorded 39 violations of its airspace in the first nine months of 2026, against 17 in the whole of 2025, according to the Presidency. The defence ministry is developing drone detection and interception capabilities with outside help and has received a €120mn EU grant towards a medium-range air-defence system. The same council meeting approved phased physical protection plans for critical energy infrastructure and measures to close critical cyber vulnerabilities.

Asked at the conference about the possibility of Russian missiles hitting Moldovan industry and warehousing, Tofan was dismissive to the point of gallows humour. "Most of the missiles are flying over us and landing in Romania," he said.

The risk is nonetheless real and the country is not in a position to manage it alone. Moldova maintains a standing army of about 15,000, with roughly double that number in reserve, and depends on its partners in Brussels for its security.

The government's answer to that asymmetry is to make a virtue of it. Chisinau looks to the Baltic states as the model: small members of a very large union that kept their nimbleness while trading up to a market of 450mn people. Tofan made the argument in New York a week before the conference, addressing the UN General Assembly.

"Small countries do not choose either their geographical position or their size. But being small does not mean being powerless," he said. "Nations, like people, are shaped by the choices they make: whom they trust, whom they choose to lead them, whom they consider their friends, and how they respond when things turn against them. For a long time, many of these choices were made by others on our behalf."

Ukraine is the opportunity

The end of the war would hand Moldova the largest commercial opening in its history, and the government is telling companies to prepare for it now. Moldova will be an active partner in Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction, Tofan said, and Moldovan firms should position themselves for the contracts.

"We are talking about what could become the largest reconstruction project since the second world war, approximately $600bn," he said. "In logistics, energy, construction materials, and infrastructure, Moldova can play a real role. The study conducted by Kyiv School of Economics and AmCham Moldova identified about 400 opportunities for companies in our country."

The nearest-term of those is storage. Tofan pointed to developing warehousing capacity inside Moldova for Ukrainian companies, and to supplying the materials reconstruction will need. The logic is geographic: Moldova shares its entire eastern border with Ukraine, sits outside the range of most of the fighting, and is inside the EU's trade perimeter in all but name.

The European direction

Moldova was granted EU candidate status in June 2022 and formally opened accession negotiations in June 2024. The talks have moved faster this year than in the two before it. In June the EU opened negotiations on Cluster 1, covering fundamental values, the judiciary, fundamental rights and justice, at a ministerial meeting in Luxembourg. Cluster 6, covering external relations, followed in July after Hungary dropped its objection.

The scale of the administrative task behind those headlines is easy to miss. Moldova's accession programme envisages transposing more than 3,000 EU legal acts through 1,791 legislative measures and 1,088 implementing actions.

Brussels has begun to reward the pace. In her State of the Union address on September 16, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen singled Moldova out. "Because their future lies within our Union, we will soon be proposing roadmaps for the candidates that have made most progress," she told the European Parliament, naming Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans, while stressing that accession remains merit-based and that respect for EU values is "non-negotiable".

Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said the roadmaps "will set a clear list of priorities: deadlines and deliverables that will help the most advanced candidates complete the necessary reforms". Cristina Gherasimov, Moldova's deputy prime minister for European integration, welcomed the announcement as giving Chisinau clarity and predictability, while noting that a roadmap would not fix an accession date or set the pace of negotiations.

Tofan's contribution at the conference was to promise that the regulatory convergence will run ahead of formal membership. The government intends to recognise EU and Romanian professional certifications and standards directly in Moldova. "If you hold certification within the EU, including Romania, our objective is to grant mutual recognition," he said. "As an overarching policy direction, whatever is certified in the EU should be valid in Moldova."

Exports and the pull of the single market

The trade numbers explain why the European path is treated in Chisinau as an economic strategy rather than a foreign-policy preference. A few years ago 32% of Moldova's domestic exports went to EU countries. That share is now 67.4%.

"The European Union has been the market that absorbed our shocks related to the sharp decline in exports experienced in 2023, 2024, and 2025," said Veaceslav Ionita, an economic analyst.

Total trade with the bloc has doubled in four years to a record $8.5bn at the end of last year, made up of $2.6bn of Moldovan exports and $5.9bn of imports of European technology and goods. Half of all Moldovan exports now go to four European countries. Romania takes 43% of everything sold into the EU, making it comfortably the largest single partner; Italy is second on 13.5% of EU-bound exports, followed by Czechia and Germany.

Automotive components are the largest export category into the EU, ahead of textiles and agricultural products including seeds, cereals, oils and fruit, with furniture, alcoholic drinks and glassware behind them. Imports are led by fuel, then machinery and electrical equipment, followed by food, beverages, plastics, pharmaceuticals, textiles and metals. Ionita notes that the import spikes of 2022 and 2025 were driven by the reconfiguration and repricing of energy supply rather than by demand.

The financing relationship has moved further and faster than the trade. EU lending to Moldova was $22.4mn in 2019. By the first quarter of 2026 it was almost $945mn, an increase of more than 42 times, and EU loans had risen to 19.3% of Moldova's total external borrowing from 4.9% in 2020. The bloc is also the main source of grants: external grants came to MDL4.7bn in 2025, of which close to 59% came from the European Commission.

On Ionita's reading the dependency is now structural. "Trade with the EU constitutes a significant majority, foreign investments in Moldova's economy primarily originate from the EU, and the financial support in the form of loans and grants is mainly provided by the EU," he said.

Services, and what they mask

Moldova earned more than $3.2bn from service exports in 2025, close to half of everything it sold abroad, and the composition is shifting towards higher-value work in information technology, medical travel and international higher education. Non-EU regional partners including Turkey, Georgia and Ukraine take roughly 16% of national exports, while winemakers and fruit growers push into Asia and the Middle East.

Healthcare has become the standout. Travel services generated €845mn, or about MDL16.5bn, in 2025 as Moldova received more than 500,000 foreign visitors, over 30% of whom came specifically for medical treatment, predominantly from Germany and Italy.

"Moldovan providers have expanded beyond basic procedures to offer integrated packages covering transport and accommodation," said Elena Stepanov, executive director of the National Inbound and Domestic Tourism Association of Moldova. "Foreign patients benefit from convenient logistics and multilingual medical personnel, particularly in high-demand fields like dentistry."

Investors have stayed, if not in the numbers Chisinau would like. "With a conflict in the region, Moldova's attractiveness is inevitably impacted compared to previous years," said Irina Tolstousov, deputy director of the Invest Moldova Agency. "Yet foreign investors have chosen not only to remain, but to reinvest in their operations."

Independent economists are less sanguine, and their objection goes to the heart of the government's sales pitch. Rising service revenues do not compensate for weak industrial processing and a persistent reliance on raw material exports, warns the analyst Viorel Girbu, who points to a goods trade deficit of roughly $4bn in the first seven months of the year.

"While individual enterprises show positive momentum, macroeconomic indicators point toward structural challenges," Girbu said, urging the government to anchor development around the Technical University of Moldova and the Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy to build industrial resilience outside the capital.

Romania as the anchor

If Moldova has a single commercial relationship that matters, it is with Bucharest. Romania takes about 29% of total Moldovan exports, two-way goods trade is worth about €3.16bn, Romanian direct investment exceeds €442mn and more than 1,700 active companies in Moldova are backed by Romanian capital.

Speaking to more than 60 executives at the Moldova and Romania investment roundtable on Monday, Tofan repeated the argument and attached numbers to it. Qualifying enterprises with annual turnover of up to €10mn, or about MDL200mn, pay a standard 12% corporate income tax and nothing at all on reinvested profits.

"In Chisinau, you have a pro-business government," he said. "We are committed to serving as partners to investors, and we want these dialogues to translate into more companies establishing and scaling their operations in Moldova."

The export data shows why diversification is more than a talking point. While deliveries to Romania, Ukraine and Germany all fell, exports to Turkey and the Czech Republic rose by more than 50%, partly offsetting the losses. Italy and Turkey each took 9.4% of total exports, the Czech Republic 8.6%, Ukraine 7.9% and Germany 3.6%.

Converting interest into capital

The test of a business week is what follows it. Alongside the Romanian roundtable, Tofan met representatives of SITA, the air transport technology and communications company founded in 1949, which serves more than 150 airlines and airports and employs about 6,000 people. He invited it to place teams and technical services in Moldova, using the tax benefits available through Moldova IT Park.

"We are open to investments and the government will be a reliable partner for investors," Tofan said. "We have talented people and a favourable tax regime. I am confident that you will find good partners in Moldova, including among the international companies that are already present here."

Parallel discussions ran with American business leaders and Romanian executives, aimed at turning interest into projects in technology, infrastructure and the use of artificial intelligence in public administration. None has yet been announced as a commitment.

That is the honest summary of where Moldova stands. It has the trade orientation, the tax regime and the political direction that an investor looking for a European base would want, and it has an accession process moving faster than at any point since 2022. It also has a war on its eastern border, 39 airspace violations this year, an army of 15,000 and a National Security Council preparing for a winter in which the lights may not stay on. Speed, agility and trust are real advantages. They are being offered against a risk that Chisinau cannot price and cannot control.