Civil defence preparation: success or failure?

In mid-January, the president of Romania Nicușor Dan signed a new law on preparing citizens for defence

Roxana Vasile, 28.01.2026, 13:18

In mid-January, the president of Romania Nicușor Dan signed a new law on preparing citizens for defence. The first stage in implementing the law was planned for February-March. According to the new legislation, young men and women aged between 18 and 35, with permanent residence in Romania, have the opportunity to voluntarily undergo a 4-month basic military training programme. During this time, they are provided with accommodation, food and medical assistance. At the end of the programme, they also receive an allowance equivalent to 3 median gross salaries. For the authorities, however, it is essential that after these 4 months of training, the young people will either be able to enter a selection to become professional Army personnel, or they may decide to attend a relevant school or stay as voluntary reserve troops.

Why was such a law necessary in Romania? The retired colonel Ion Petrescu, a journalist and military analyst, explains:

Ion Petrescu: “A strong army means a free society, in which citizens can follow their professional path, have secured incomes and optimistic prospects for their families. To use a somewhat extreme but necessary parallel, the army is to society what a big loud dog is for a peasant home. Because, as we can see, we need to protect the borders of states that can fall prey to aggressions that were unimaginable yesterday. So the law promulgated by president Nicuşor Dan strengthens the national military corps and, at the same time, serves the national interest – for Romania to remain a sovereign country, with secured territorial integrity and also capable of preserving its status as a NATO member state and a member of the European Union.”

Romania has a deficit of both active and reserve military personnel. And the reserve staff is naturally aging, as its members include mainly men who completed their compulsory military service by 2007, the year when it was suspended. With the suspension of this compulsory military service, states such as Poland have sensed the need for fresh, young and permanently trained reserve staff. On the other hand, in Romania, the reserve staff has been ignored since 2007. The current law on preparing the population for defence, therefore on gradually rebuilding the reserve corps, was passed at the last minute, with a delay that some military experts did not hesitate to describe as irresponsible. What does the retired colonel Ion Petrescu think?

Ion Petrescu: “When the compulsory military service was abolished, there were other circumstances and there was a sense of military de-escalation in Europe. Life has proved that this democratic tendency in the centre and western part of Europe was not followed by similar measures in the East, where a nuclear superpower, I mean the Russian Federation, continued to look at neighbouring states in the old, Soviet-kind framework. We cannot stay unconcerned, for the simple fact that we live in Europe and we want to have neighbours on our borders who look constructively towards a future necessary for all, that of international cooperation. For now, in various other places we are witnessing geopolitical monologues with obvious consequences.”

In the opinion of the military journalist, for many young Romanians undergoing a military training programme would mean moving from an area of ​​uncertainty, of fog, to one where they would feel that their skills or knowledge matter. Ion Petrescu gives an example:

Ion Petrescu: “Reality on the battlefield shows that the use of drones has become a constant, and so has the use of young people with skills in handling computers, so we are also witnessing military conflicts taking the form of electronic warfare. We need trained minds, passionate minds to participate in this effort, in dedicated electronic warfare units designed to counter actions aimed at spreading confusion, as we have seen happen in other countries, a confusion that can only be favourable to those who intend to invade sovereign independent states. So the contribution of young people to this national effort will be in a new framework, in which their skills and what they could be trained to achieve will count, so that they feel useful to their unit, to the national military corps and implicitly, to the defence of Romania. These are not just big words!”

It remains to be seen, however, how many young men and women aged 18 to 35 will be willing to enrol in this defence training program. Opinion polls conducted over the last few years vary too much to provide an accurate image.

According to the “Romania Security Barometer” conducted in 2022 by the Laboratory for Information Warfare Analysis and Strategic Communication (LARICS) and the Romanian Academy, when asked “what would you do if Romania were attacked?” only about a third of respondents answered that they would participate in its defence in any way they could. The same number would wait first to see how things go, and the other third would run away or hide with their families. Of those who said they would not defend their country, the majority would not do it because, they said, this is the job of the military. Others mentioned family obligations or said they would not go to war “to defend the riches of the corrupt and of swindlers.”

A year later, in 2023, according to a survey conducted by INSCOP Research, over half of Romanians (50.5%) said they would fight for their homeland, almost 20% would emigrate and over 11% would hide until the war was over.

Finally, the most recent survey on this topic, conducted by Avangarde and made public earlier this year, shows that half of Romanians believe compulsory military service should be reintroduced, while the other half reject the idea. Moreover, almost three-quarters (74%) are convinced that, if attacked, Romania would be defended by NATO. (AMP)