Parliamentary Elections, 28 September 2025

After a period of deep political polarization, especially regarding EU integration versus Russian influence, Moldova held parliamentary elections on 28 September 2025 (PACE 2025). The parliament’s 101 seats are elected based on a single national constituency, by proportional representation from closed party or bloc lists, or as independents (OSCE 2025). The election management body is the Central Election Commission (CEC) (PACE 2025), which holds a five-year mandate and is composed of nine members. Among the CEC’s responsibilities is overseeing the State Automated Information System ‘Elections’ (SAISE) which manages several applications (OSCE 2025).

The elections were ‘competitive and offered voters a clear choice’, albeit the partisan and polarized information environment ‘significantly hindered’ voters’ opportunities to make their choice on an informed basis (OSCE 2025). There were various electoral management concerns including perceived misuse of administrative resources; an uneven playing field; shortcomings in campaign finance transparency; and a reduction of polling stations (PACE 2025)— the CEC relocated five Transnistrian polling stations shortly before election day. On election day itself, there were procedural failures including improper sealing of boxes, breaches of secrecy, group voting, identical signatures, misplaced cameras, and difficulties reconciling protocols. It is claimed that accessibility barriers affected 65 per cent of polling stations. During counting and tabulation, additional issues included not counting stationary-box ballots, pre-signed protocols and failure to vote on disputed ballots (OSCE 2025).

The campaign period was marked by an ‘unprecedented scale of hybrid attacks’, including cybersecurity incidents, disinformation and vote-buying operations funded by foreign sources and originating from the Russian Federation (OSCE 2025). In response, authorities conducted 844 searches, detained 122 people, opened 13 criminal cases and issued 46 preventive measures (OSCE 2025). The CEC removed Heart of Moldova party candidates from the race and cancelled the registration of the Moldova Mare party as they were accused of hiding resources, receiving foreign money and bribing voters, among others (OSCE 2025). Since the ballots cannot be stamped again, the votes cast for Moldova Mare were marked invalid (PACE 2025).

There were reported bomb threats at some of the local polling stations, as well as at ones abroad: in Belgium, Italy, the USA, Spain and Romania, and by the bridges over the Nistru river, leading to temporary suspensions and queues. Moreover, intimidation and harassment of journalists were reported, mainly from non-state actors (OSCE 2025).

The online environment in the elections was massively disrupted. Moldova faced more than 1,000 cyberattacks in 2025, with the CEC among the institutions targeted. A fraudulent CEC website was taken down and roughly 1,000 takedown requests were sent to platforms, meeting with varying degrees of cooperation. Russian state media amplified disinformation narratives claiming the EU would ‘occupy Moldova’, NATO would ‘threaten’ Transnistria, and elections would be falsified. A large-scale cyberattack required blocking host.md, taking about 4,000 websites offline (OSCE 2025). Attacks included DDoS (Distributed denial of service, peaking at over 16 million sessions), phishing, volumetric attacks on critical infrastructure, attempts to clone results pages, and jamming attempts targeting polling stations abroad. There were also instances reported of deepfakes and impersonation (PACE 2025).

Gender quotas for candidate lists are provided for in law and were respected; women made up about 43 per cent of candidates—and a high percentage of election administrators. However, only three of 19 political entities were led by women, and female candidates were not frequently visible as lead speakers (OSCE 2025). Women candidates were also primary targets of online harassment, sexist threats, intimidation, and widespread hate speech on social media, messaging apps, online media, and broadcast television (OSCE 2025: Necsutu 2025).

Slightly over 1.6 million people casted their ballots in the Parliamentary Election in Moldova 2025 (Statista 2025). The voter turnout was 52.2 per cent with the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) securing 50.2 per cent of the vote and 55 of 101 seats. The opposition Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP) came second with 24.2 per cent and 26 seats (International IDEA n.d.).

Innovations

In the 2025, ‘Law 100/2025’ made amendments to 13 laws including the Electoral Code, Law on Political Parties, Criminal Code and Contravention Code, aiming to strengthen the anti-corruption framework, expand corruption definitions, introduce a ban on early campaigning, prohibit the misuse of charitable organizations, ban collection of identity documents and establish new rules for independent candidates (OSCE 2025). Tightening of campaign finance rules also included banning purchases on credit and requiring special bank accounts and weekly public reports (PACE 2025). The SAISE was placed under the cybersecurity protection framework, and a new Cybersecurity Agency (CSA) was established to oversee risk management (OSCE 2025). About 30 per cent more polling stations were opened abroad and postal voting was added in several new countries (PACE 2025).