The Republic of Moldova is one of the least known countries in Europe, and it is not surprising that Annalena Baerbock hardly knows it either.

When the Green German Foreign Minister appeared in front of the press on Saturday after meeting her Moldovan counterpart Nicu Popescu in Chișinău, she said that for her "first inaugural visit" she would of course have liked "to have come to your beautiful country under different circumstances", and that " especially given the impressive reform process your country has embarked on in recent years.”

Michael Martens

Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.

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Moldova's foreign minister knows, of course, that there can be no talk of "years" of a reform process.

President Maia Sandu, the most recognizable face of Moldova's new westward course, took office in late December 2020, but her key ally, reform-minded Prime Minister Natalia Gavriliţa, whose cabinet includes Popescu, has only been in office for eight months.

Glad for western attention

Whether the two politicians can prevail is uncertain.

But of course Popescu doesn't correct Baerbock.

One is grateful that the foreign minister of the largest and also in the most recent refugee crisis most important European state has taken the time to visit a country that is almost always overshadowed by European attention.

Because the Moldovan government needs help, and the prerequisite for that is a resource that Chisinau is well aware of is scarce - Western attention.

Both, alert attention and concrete help, Baerbock had with him.

One can believe that the German Foreign Minister is just as interested in the suffering of the refugees as in the worries of their hosts when she says in one of her sentences without a period or a comma: “To help, to share, that sounds so easy to take in people, but to realize that for the last two weeks you have been in your own, maybe two or three room apartment, where you have children yourself, where you live close together, to take in another family there, and that too not only to provide protection, but of course to provide breakfast, lunch, supper, electricity, laundry, and also the many psychological effects, children who just cry all day, or children who no longer speak at all – all of that too cope, that's just not something you do on the side,and in that spirit, many thanks to your people here in Moldova.”

It is a small miracle that such meandering garlands of sentences somehow come to a meaningful end, and this miracle occurs several times on this day.

But Baerbock can also be short and sweet when it matters – and for Moldova, it matters right now.

Ukraine's smallest and poorest neighboring country has taken in almost 110,000 refugees in the past two weeks, and the trend is of course increasing.

Based on the population of two and a half million inhabitants, Moldova is home to more refugees than any other neighboring country in Ukraine.

In relation to the low per capita income of the population, it becomes even clearer what the small Southeast European state and its people are currently doing.

Baerbock suspects what a burden that is and announces that