Moldovan parliament adopts national defence strategy

Chisinau, 19 July /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament today adopted the national defence strategy and the action plan on its implementation for 2018-2021.  The documents were backed with the votes of the majority of the MPs.  

The national defence strategy is a document of policies which sets the way the state’s duties are fulfilled, in order to ensure the national defence.

Defence Minister Eugen Sturza presented the document in the parliament’s plenum. “The strategy implies the consolidation, development and modernization of the national defence strategy. Thus, the strategic vision of Moldova in the defence sector provides for the designing and carrying out of a viable and efficient defence system, according to the security challenges, able to ensure the prevention, discouraging and rejection of eventual aggressions, attacks and subversive actions against the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Moldova and against the security of its citizens,” Sturza said.  

The lawmakers of the Party of Socialists (PSRM) and Party of Communists (PCRM) criticized the strategy. At the same time, the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) supported the document. “The country’s neutrality status is at the basis of the strategy. The document provides for more measures of strengthening the defence system,” PDM MP Marian Lupu said.  

Among the threats and risks identified as a result of the analysis of the strategic security environment internationally, regionally and nationally, the document enumerates the military potential in Moldova’s Transnistrian region, use of instruments of information propaganda, attacks against Moldova’s critical infrastructure, cyber attacks, illegal migration, illicit trafficking of weapons, terrorist activity, etc.     

The priority directions of action, included in the document, imply the development and consolidation of military capabilities for the efficient fulfillment of the constitutional mission of defending the state, ensuring the work of the mobilization mechanism, enhancing the parliamentary control in carrying out the process of reformation, strategic communication, strengthening the national system of defence in the sense of anticipating, prevention and counteracting threats and risks to the state’s security, especially the hybrid ones, improving the national system of management of the emergency situations, etc.  

The draft national defence strategy and of the action plan on its implementation was worked out by an inter-departmental working group, made up of representatives of 23 authorities and institutions with powers in the defence sector.  

(Reporter A. Ciobanu, editor M. Jantovan)