I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.
The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).
Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)
Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).
So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.
I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.
The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).
Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)
Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).
So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.