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Moldova leaves the CIS as Kyiv adopts EU programme
Summary
A look back at two steps towards Europe reported in the days around 3 April 2026, in Chișinău and Kyiv.
What did Moldova and Ukraine do to move closer to the European Union in the days leading up to 3 April 2026? Both took formal decisions, reported on 1 and 2 April.
On 2 April, Moldova's parliament approved the country's withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The government said the organisation's core values and principles, such as territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders, were no longer respected. It pointed to Russia's actions in the region, including the war against Ukraine and what it called an illegal military presence on Moldovan territory.
A day earlier, on 1 April, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers approved the National Programme for Adapting Ukrainian Legislation to European Union Law (the EU acquis). The programme contains about 1,850 tasks, which involve implementing more than 1,600 acts of EU law.
The two decisions were separate, and the reports from those days do not link them. Together they show a legislative and political track in both countries: one formally leaving a post-Soviet grouping, the other setting out a detailed workload for aligning its laws with those of the EU.
