The Economist: Moldova may be considered for European Union membership "in another optimistic couple of decades"

The Economist recently wrote an article entitled Wrongly Labelled, in which it argues that the tag of "Eastern Europe" is being rendered useless by the economic crisis.

The feature includes a passage on Moldova, as well:
"The ’stans vary (Tajikistan is poor, Kazakhstan go-getting). But all have slim prospects of joining the EU in the lifetime of anyone reading this article. That creates a second useful category: potential members of the union. It starts with sure-fire bets such as Croatia, and other small digestible countries in the western Balkans such as Macedonia. It includes big problematic cases such as Turkey and Ukraine and even—in another optimistic couple of decades—four other ex-Soviet republics, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan (the last, maybe, one day, on Turkey’s coat-tails)."