Romania unveils draft law allowing young people to volunteer for a four-month military training stage

Romania is set to enact the Defense Law and the Law on Preparing the Population for Defense, according to defense minister Ionuț Moșteanu. If the draft laws are approved, young people between 18 and 35 years old will be able to do the army voluntarily for a period of four months.

According to the Romanian minister, the purpose of the draft laws is to prepare the population for crises and to strengthen the Romanian Army.

During the training period, the volunteers will receive a monthly payment of RON 2,000-3,000 (EUR 400-600). After the four months, they will be able to enter the operational reserve of the Romanian Army.

“Once they have tested the army, once they have seen what the army is about, some will find this suits them very well and will want to stay. From these [volunteers], we will recruit, in the future, the permanent cadres of the army. We will offer them the prospect of becoming professional soldiers if they are suitable and wish to remain,” Ionuț Moșteanu said, adding that the volunteers can also be women.

The Romanian official also announced that new rounds of the MOBEX mobilization exercise will take place in September and October, reuniting voluntary reservists in several counties.

“This mobilization exercise has been happening for years, by counties. This year, it happened in the spring in Teleorman, Giurgiu, and Olt. We will see it in September in Sibiu and Mureș, and in October in Bucharest and Ilfov. There is an exercise to evaluate the volunteers,” the minister said during an interview for Euronews Romania.

“The Army must know where to find this operational reserve, at what address, respectively, and they must know at which territorial commissariat they must come in case they are needed. But these are absolutely normal things that happen in any army, in any country in the world,” he added.

However, Moșteanu also highlighted the fact that these exercises are not preparations for war, as some have claimed.

“I want to tell the ones who will see on the internet that someone is calling them to the army: no one is calling them to the army, we are not entering any war, and the army is not taking anyone by force into the military,” said the minister, explaining that such exercises take place periodically.

(Photo source: Ionuț Moșteanu on Facebook)