The commission wants Moldova to join the union – so it should drop its dry bureaucratic culture and instead meet people where they are

• Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău

It was both enjoyable and strange to see the EU enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, present the news on Moldovan TV a couple of months ago. For one thing, she is Slovenian – and she is also a diplomat, not a news anchor. But there she was, announcing that Moldova had made more progress in the last three years than it had in the previous 30, and that negotiations for our country to join the European Union would open soon.

It was equally surprising to spot Kos in the Instagram stories of leading Moldovan influencer siblings Emilian and Nina Crețu at the end of August – she had invited them to her house in Brussels for a Moldovan pie-making workshop. Kos even brought together the two heads of Moldova’s biggest Orthodox churches for a meeting, in spite of their mutual animosity. This is not the way we are used to EU officials communicating.

Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău