Nicoleta Pauliuc,
Chair of the Committee on Defence, Public Order and National
Security in the Romanian Senate.
There are moments in the life of a state when reality changes the vocabulary, and moments when vocabulary changes reality. For Romania, 2026 is a year in which the facts have outpaced the public language
used to describe them. We are still spoken of, in our own discourse and in that of our partners, as a country that receives security. The reality is different: without ever announcing it, we have begun to produce security – for ourselves and for others.
Romania has crossed a threshold that no one announced – because no one had planned the crossing.
The threshold is not visible in declarations. It is visible in numbers. The 2026 defense budget – 49.4 billion lei, 2.45% of GDP – exceeds the NATO average and represents a 16.62% increase in a year when other sectors have been compressed by fiscal austerity. This allocation is not symbolic. It is a choice. And a choice repeated, year after year, becomes a trajectory.
The threshold is visible in the European SAFE programme,
where Romania is the second-largest beneficiary, with
€16.68 billion allocated – second only to Poland. SAFE is not a loan for purchasing. It is a loan for building – capabilities, industrial capacities, supply chains integrated at European level. For the first time in a generation, Romania negotiates not only what it receives, but what it produces.
The threshold is visible in geography operationalized. Through the European Solidarity Lanes, a significant share of Ukraine’s agricultural exports has transited Romania. Europe’s largest American military base under construction stands at Mihail Kogălniceanu. On NATO’s eastern flank, we contribute to Air Policing missions in support of Ukraine and host the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system at Deveselu. These things do not happen in countries that merely receive security.
Geography gave us relevance. Action has given us weight.
The threshold is visible in partnerships. The strategic partnership with Ukraine, signed in March 2026, is the first of its kind with a direct neighbour. The continuity of the strategic relationship with the United States – over twenty years, four American administrations, six Romanian governments – is the most stable fixed point of our foreign policy. Moldova finds in Romania its principal anchor for European integration. In all these relationships, Romania is no longer the party that asks – it is the party that offers.
Security is no longer something we receive. It is something we produce – and in this production, we are beginning to be heard.
These figures – the budget, the SAFE allocation, the partnerships, the logistical contribution – are not the goal. They are the measure. The measure of a transformation built gradually, under several governments, across political crises and shifting coalitions, through three institutional pillars: Cotroceni, Palatul Victoria, and Parliament.
Here arises the most important question: how was this possible? How does a country with chronic governmental instability – three governments in two years, deepening polarization – maintain a linear strategic trajectory?
The answer does not lie in the political figures – they have changed. It lies in the institutional architecture that outlasts them. CSAT (Supreme Council of National Defense) for strategic decisions. The Government for execution. Parliament for authorization, oversight, and ratification. Three filters that depend on no single person and no single configuration. The guarantee of predictability is not a party or a leader – it is the constitutional design itself.
Continuity, in Romania, is not a virtue. It is an institution.
This institutional design is, paradoxically, our most under- communicated strategic advantage. The partners who follow us closely – Washington, Brussels, Kyiv, Chișinău – have understood that Romania’s choices withstand political change. The citizens of allied states still see us through the old description. Transatlantic Trends surveys place Romania among the countries with the lowest mutual trust – not because the reality is poor, but because we have not yet learned to present ourselves.
The threshold has been crossed in fact. It must now be crossed in narrative. Over the next five years, concrete decisions will determine how far we carry this trajectory: how we negotiate the real share of local production in SAFE contracts; how we articulate our role in the European defense architecture beyond 2030; how we manage relations with a post-war Ukraine holding the most complex military experience on the continent; how we integrate Moldova into the European orbit without losing it politically.
These choices will not be made by a single government. They will be made through the institutional filters that have sustained the trajectory until now. And their success depends on something which, for us, is still unfamiliar: recognizing publicly what we already are.
The threshold has been crossed. It only remains to acknowledge that we have become providers of security.
