Allies on a mission: the experience of French soldiers in Romania.
On NATO's Eastern Flank, allied and Romanian soldiers work together every day, in multinational commands and drills that strengthen security in the region.
Agenția Media a Armatei, 18.03.2026, 14:00
On NATO’s Eastern Flank, allied and Romanian soldiers work together every day, in multinational commands and drills that contribute to strengthening security in the region. French soldiers are also deployed in Bucharest, involved in the field of communications and IT, an essential field for cooperation between allied structures. One of them is Sergeant Melvin, with the French National Support Element, a network manager responsible for ensuring communications between French forces and other allied structures deployed in Romania. “My mission here, in Bucharest, as a network manager, is to ensure and support intercommunication between French forces and other troops in Romania,” he says.
Sergeant Melvin has already participated in several international missions and says that the experiences in different regions of the world are very different: “I have had other missions. I have been to Chad twice, in Africa, and also twice in Poland. It is different, because it is not the same climate. I think I prefer to be in Central Europe, because my missions in Poland and here allowed me to meet many people from the allies. In Africa I worked mainly with French forces,” Sergeant Melvin said.
In multinational missions, cooperation between soldiers also involves adapting to different ways of working. Sergeant Melvin also told us what cooperation with allied soldiers means in practice. “We share the same technical base. I worked with soldiers from the 45th Communications and Informatics Battalion in Poland, we use the same system, but in different ways. It was very nice to share our working methods and develop new skills,” he said
Captain Maxime, from the brigade-level Forward Command Element, also works in the same multinational structure, advising the allied command in the field of communications and information technology: “My mission is to provide advice and assessments to the brigade-level Forward Command Element commander in the field of communications and information technology, in order to improve the daily working conditions in Bucharest, during international exercises with multinational divisions. As part of our missions, we work in close collaboration with our allies, the Romanians and the British.”
Beyond military activity, the time spent in Romania also gave them the opportunity to discover local places, tastes and traditions: “We had time to visit the Palace of Parliament, we will also see Ceaușescu’s house. We also visited the new cathedral in December. We tasted traditional food, bean soup, mici and papanași.”
Captain Maxime told us what he thinks about our country: “Romania is a very beautiful country, which has known how to preserve its culture and all its diversity over the centuries, and this seems to me rare in different countries. It is truly beautiful to find all these traditions here, combined with modernity.”
Experiences that show that, beyond joint exercises and missions, cooperation between allies also means the meeting of people, cultures and traditions — here, on the Eastern Flank of the Alliance. (EE)
