Security decisions in Romania’s Parliament
The Chamber of Deputies endorsed 2 bills on Romania’s security
Roxana Vasile, 20.02.2025, 13:50
The Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest, as the first party to be notified, endorsed a draft law that allows drones that illegally enter Romanian airspace to be shot down. More precisely, drones that enter national airspace illegally will be destroyed or disabled if Romanian or NATO military forces are unable to control them.
Another bill, which regulates the way military missions in Romania are carried out in peacetime, was also passed by the Chamber of Deputies. One of the measures allows the authority of specific structures in the Romanian Army to be transferred for a limited period to a commander of the Allied military forces participating in these missions.
The bills were criticised by the populist-sovereigntist opposition comprising S.O.S. Romania, the Young People’s Party (POT) and AUR. The AUR deputy, Ramona Bruynseels:
Ramona Bruynseels: “NATO is not an instrument for ceding sovereignty. We do not know who will be in government tomorrow. Do you want us to expose ourselves to the risk that, at some point, someone, anyone, will come and use this instrument to introduce repressive measures against Romanian civilians?”
The Social Democrat Daniel Suciu retorted:
Daniel Suciu: “What do you want, esteemed colleagues from the opposition who talk about a transfer of sovereignty and it is not true, it is not about this… what do you want? To have drones fall on our schools? To have drones fall on our cities and then shrug your shoulders that Parliament did not do its job?”
Along with the Social Democratic Deputies, their ruling coalition partners, the National Liberal Party and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, as well as the USR in opposition, voted in favour of the draft laws.
After the documents regarding the control of the national airspace, and the management of military missions on Romanian territory in peacetime were endorsed, the defence ministry made a number of clarifications, amid “an extensive campaign of disinformation and fake news massively distributed by a number of users of various digital platforms in Romania” triggered by the 2 bills.
The defence ministry says that all the procedural steps required for these bills have been taken, including public reviews. The same source also says that attempts to depict concrete measures to strengthen Romania’s and NATO’s defence capacity as acts of national treason are part of a pattern of disinformation campaigns carried out in the public space in Romania, “including by state actors with an agenda contrary to Romania’s sovereignty and against NATO, through which an attempt is made to induce panic and to weaken confidence in the capacity of national security institutions to fulfil their constitutional missions.”
“Claims of unconstitutionality or betrayal of Romania’s interests are false and totally unjustified,” the defence ministry emphasizes, in a press release which explains in detail the content of the two laws. (AMP)
