Economic Woes Hurt SE Europe Defense Budgets

Economic Woes Hurt SE Europe Defense Budgets
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 21 Oct 2009 07:30 Print | Email

SOFIA - Shrinking defense budgets are putting a squeeze on armies in Southeastern Europe, raising pressure for tight control of spending and putting some procurement projects in question, ministers said here Oct. 21.

With the economic crisis expected to reach its full force in Southeast Europe in end-2009 and the beginning of 2010, several of the defense ministers told AFP on the sidelines of the forum that they will face some budget cuts next year.

Related TopicsEurope
Even if they receive enough money, they will have to tighten their procedures on how they spend it, they said.

"One of the major challenges that we face is from our finance ministers," Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolay Mladenov said at the opening of talks between regional defense ministers.

"The financial crisis and economic stagnation are two factors we need to consider carefully when formulating our forms of cooperation in the future. We need to consider how to invest more in joint efforts," he added.

The annual Southeast Europe Defense Ministerial meeting gathered in Sofia with defense ministers and deputy ministers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Bulgaria already announced in October that it is dropping a deal to buy two Gowind corvettes for its navy from Armaris, part of French defense giant DCNS.

"Our budget is already down at 1.2 percent of gross domestic product. This means that many of our previous spending plans become impossible," Romanian State Secretary for Policy of Defence and Planning Viorel Oancea told AFP.

"I hope that 2010 will be a better year for defense in Romania," he said, adding that fulfilling its army modernization engagements within NATO will now require a "serious effort" on the part of Romania.

Greece and Turkey, which have big defense budgets, also said the crisis was forcing them to be much more careful in military spending.

Greece's budget for defense is traditionally stable, Greek National Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos said, but the economic crisis raised pressure for defense spending to be "reasonable and transparent."

Turkish Defense Minister Mehmet Vecdi Gonul told AFP: "Although the economic and financial crisis affected the Turkish budget without doubt, we are affected less than the other ministries...There are always some difficulties, but no big difficulties."

He said: "Our parliament is generous enough not to cut our budget so we will not leave any [defense] projects out."

The minister added that Turkey would definitely go ahead with a major project to launch an attack helicopter with Italy as well as on some military equipment deals with France and Israel.

From Denfensenews.com

We are all too poor for our own defense...

But... but... the smart and progressive politicians that eliminated compulsory service and that shrank the army told us that would actually make us stronger. Now they're saying we can't even afford THAT?

Romanian politicians, 'smart'? 'Progressive'? Good one.

Anyway, if we have probs maintaining a smaller volunteer army, why would you think we could afford a larger, conscript army?

We should just be thankful there are no wars on the horizon. I love my country, it's home,but there's no way I'd die for these ... 'politicians', I'd sooner turn my rifle on them first.

They sacrificed quantity for quality but knew quality costs. Now they're saying we can't afford quality either. So how does that leave us?

I'm sure that the Romanian Govt messing things up is no real news.

My only point is that the problems of the Romanian military don't stem from having or not having conscription, it's about money and corruption.

Conscription or not, that's just ways of slicing the cake. But if the cake itself is small and rotten? That's the real problem.

As for the conscription or not decision itself, it all boils down to stuff like " more old tanks or less newer tanks ". The '91 Iraq war showed that if the technological gap is wide enough,quantity means nothing and our equipment is really old. Seriously, T-55s? BMP-1s? No SP-ART? No platoon-level ATGMs? No decent SAMs? No decent fighters? I'd say that cutting quantity to increase quality was an absolute must for the Romanian military.

This post has been edited by IAR80 on October 23, 2009 01:24 pm

Not only Romanian military; "leaner and meaner" seems the way to go for all in the era of "asymmetric" warfare!


The era of big, clumsy armies is over, has been over for a while. Even the Russians have accepted this reality.

(Now they have a small, clumsy military. Need proof? Look at the Georgian invasion: poor coordination of forces, even against an inept foe, failure to gain air supremacy even against NO fighter aviation! Only the Black sea fleet looked reallly good, aparently)

Greece, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Turkey have kept conscription.

in Germany the conscription is under heavy attack and it's unlikely it will survive for more than 10-15 years.
even today, of the 250.000 manpower, only about 20% are conscripts.
also, conscripts cannot be send abroad against their will.