The decisions of the Country’s Supreme Defence Council
Romania is to take part in the European Unions defence initiative.
Bogdan Matei, 18.10.2017, 14:00
Often described as the umbrella of Romanian security structures and chaired by President Klaus Iohannis, the Countrys Supreme Defence Council on Tuesday approved Bucharests participation in the European Unions initiative in the field.
According to the presidents office, the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) will represent an intensified form of collaboration in the areas of security policy and common defence. This will allow member states who fulfil advanced criteria in the field of military capabilities and who wish to take on additional responsibilities to achieve a structured cooperation amongst themselves. Romania is to voice a preliminary intention to take part in a first set of ten projects from among those that have been proposed so far and whose later development corresponds to national priorities with respect to the development of military capabilities.
A member of NATO since 2004 and of the European Union since 2007, Romania has always had a measured involvement in the two organisations common security projects. It frequently plays host to NATO multi-national exercises, military bases and parts of the US missile defence shield are located on its territory, and Romanian troops have been in Afghanistan since the early 2000s, alongside their colleagues from the US.
Based on a political pact embraced by all parliamentary parties in Romania, 2% of the countrys GDP goes to defence, as requested by both US president Donald Trump and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. On the other hand, as experts have pointed out, for tens of years, under NATOs safe umbrella, the Europeans waited for the Americans to protect them from external threats.
The European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has explicitly called for the creation of a European Union military force, saying this was one of the best ways to defend the Unions values and borders. “Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously, said Juncker after Russias annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Ioan Mircea Pascu, the vice-president of the European Parliament and a former Romanian defence minister during whose tenure Romania was admitted into NATO, has a more diplomatic position vis-à-vis the idea of a common defence policy. He has told Radio Romania that security has become a main concern for European citizens and therefore for the EU structures. He also believes that the defence of the European Union, an aspect that has been neglected for a long time, cannot be ensured, in the event of massive aggression, without support from the American partners.
(translated by: Cristina Mateescu)
