Romania is one of the few NATO
countries that has raised its military budget up to 2 per cent of its
GDP. The country is now upgrading its armed forces and one of the
projects it embarks on is modernisation of the naval forces. The
project however is not going as planned. Mid January the Romanian
Ministry of Defence suspended the selection process for a €1.8
billion naval corvette program, because of “suspicions regarding
the lawfulness of the procedure.” It is only the latest step in
a process full of unclear irregularities and political turmoil.
In November 2016, the Romanian navy
signed a deal with the Dutch-owned Damen ship yard company to build
new corvettes, but the acquisition got canceled by the Government
because the procedures were not followed according to the law.
Shortly after this decision Damen
announced that he had bought a 49% stake in the Mangalia yard,
located on the Black Sea coast. The Romanian Government keeps the
majority stake with Damen responsible for the operational management
of yard. Probably Damen was hoping that this investment would give it
a preference position in new naval orders. Aside from a public
scandals about Damen employing former intelligence officers, the
acquisition had no result. In February 2018 the Romanian government
started in open international tender instead of giving the order
straight away to the Dutch shipbuilder.
Three European firms decided to partner
with Romanian counterparts to compete for the deal:
Exporter
|
Local
partners
|
Ship
and armaments
|
Cost
|
Italian
Ficantieri
|
controls
Tulcea & Braila Ship Yards
|
Abu
Dhabi Enhanced corvette with MBDA missiles
|
€
1.34bn
|
French
Naval Group
|
associated
with Constant shipyard
|
Gowind
2500 with MBDA missiles/
|
€1.2bn
|
Dutch
Damen
|
owns
Galati & Mangalia Ship Yards
|
Sigma
10514 with US weaponry
|
€€1.26bn
|
In November 2018, after some delays and
talk about the close connection of Damen to the government, the
offers came on the table. It turned out that the French made a
cheaper offer than Damen, but Damen was still favoured party. Then
the scandal broke out: In November Mihai Fifor, the Minister of
Defence, stepped down. The close
cooperation between Damen and the Romanian government was all
over the Romanian press. Former
Prime Minister Traian Basescu commented that Fifor “preferred
to resign before announcing the auction result, to be not involved in
the misery.” In a reaction Damen said not to rule out the
possibility of bringing to court those who “spread false
information” and came with a statement to publicly
clear its records.
After Mihai Fifor had stepped down, the
new Minister of Defence Gabriel Beniamin Les decided to downplay the
rumours and said:
“Regardless of how transparent you may be, when you’re talking
about €1.6bn there will always be suspicions.” However the
government disputed the renewed mandate of the chief-of-staff of the
army. This dispute between the top military officer and the
Government was related to large public procurement contracts.
According to press reports the army chief-of-staff disagreed with the
government favouring
Damen. So the head hunt encircling the acquisition broadened into
military circles. (See also: Romania's government insists on
replacing army head, IntelliNews, January 9, 2019)
In December the French financial weekly
La
Tribune wrote: “For some obscure reasons, Romania is
desperately trying to offer the deal to Damen at the expense of
(French) Naval Group which won the tender. Paris is ready to
step up to defend the Naval Group's offer”. According to La
Tribune, French minister of Defence Florence Parly will call her new
counterpart Gabriel Les to raise the issue at high level.
It is is not clear if this is the
reason that the promised decision on the acquisition on January 12
was suspended. The French Naval Group threatened the Romanian
Ministry of Defence to go to the court, because it did not agree to
be ruled out in the tender. Constanta – Naval Group’s partner in
the tender – launched a court
appeal for the cancellation of the procurement process in January
2019.
Will be continued.
