Romania Intends to Increase Army Strength to 100,000 Because of “Challenging Developments on the Borders”

Romania’s defense minister has said that he wants to increase army strength by 20,000 soldiers given the difficult situation on the country’s borders. Amid the war in Ukraine, the Romanian army wants to conduct a massive recruitment drive. However, this is not an easy task, given that the number of resignations from the military system has steadily increased in recent years and the attractiveness of military service for young people has fallen. As a result, the military system’s ability to respond to unpredictable changes in the security sector may be lagging, specialarad.ro reported. “We want to increase the Romanian army strength from 80,000 to 100,000, given the challenging developments on our borders. But this also depends on the budget and the capabilities we have,” Romanian Defense Minister Angel Tilvar claimed. More than six months ago, the neighboring country’s defense ministry had just 72,037 positions. The resignations were likely to continue and the number of vacancies kept increasing. Specialized portal globalfirepower.com claims that Romania now has only 67,000 active soldiers and 50,000 in reserve, and these figures have not been officially confirmed. Having faced with a personnel crisis, the Ministry of Defense has decided that admission to the ministry’s higher military schools for training military petty officers and non-commissioned officers should be held only on the basis of the grade point on the bachelor’s degree exam, without an entrance exam. In fact, the Romanian army will have funds for manning this year, including those intended for contractors, especially since this year’s budget increased personnel expenses to 10.22 billion Romanian lei.