Defense Minister Dîncu: At the moment, a reservist can earn around 3,000 lei during the training period / In the next four to five years we are thinking of bringing around 10,000 volunteers to this active reserve area of the Army

Defence Minister Vasile Dîncu says that a reservist can now earn around 3,000 lei while training, as the law providing for lower allowances, has been amended. He adds that there is another type of voluntary service, for those aged between 18 and 35 who want to do voluntary military training. „In the next 4-5 years we are thinking of bringing around 10,000 volunteers to this active reserve area of the army,” Dîncu says.

„We have two volunteer systems, it is, we believe, one of the future solutions for the active resource in the human reserve area for the defense of Romania. One is that of volunteer reservists, they do a training period of around three or four months and then receive an allowance, for example, for the period when they are in training, before the first law – we have amended this law now – it was quite low, somewhere around 1,500 lei was this,” Vasile Dîncu told Digi 24 on Monday evening.

He noted that the allowance was very low for the period when reservists are not mobilized.

„At the moment, a reservist can earn somewhere around 3,000 lei while doing training and quite a significant amount, I think somewhere around 1,500 lei, plus other entitlements they can get, for example, health insurance, which is very important, these are important benefits… and as an effect, I could say the following: this year we had a reserve of unfilled places from last year, from 2021, of 444 places for reservists and we have at the moment 1,400 files. So it has become much more attractive and we will be able to choose at least this number that we needed for last year’s period,” the Minister of Defence pointed out.

He explained that there is also another type of volunteering, for those aged between 18 and 35 who want to do voluntary military service.

„They can do a traineeship and afterward they stay with this training, during the traineeship they can receive an allowance, we have not established this yet, we are studying, we are working on a bill that we will launch in the coming weeks, they also have different rights, they benefit from military training and obviously they have a direct path where they can then be employed in the area of professional soldiers. (…) In the next 4-5 years, we are thinking of bringing around 10,000 volunteers to the active reserve area of the army, and we believe that we will succeed in doing this because these situations, the situation in Ukraine, and our insecurity have encouraged many people not only to take out passports but also encouraged some of them to do military training because their patriotic feeling has been activated”, said Dîncu.

Translated from Romanian