Radu Miruță: “Trees grew in the armament factories, how well the money from the endowment was used/ We will not be able to save them all”
The interim Minister of Defense, Radu Miruţă, stated, on Thursday evening, on Antena 3, that trees have grown in the arms factories in Romania so far and that several units will be saved through the SAFE Program, including the Bucharest Mechanical Plant, the Cugir factory or the Sadu factory.
“Trees have grown in the arms factories in Romania, it's a good thing that the endowment money was used for the Romanian army. Today, through this SAFE Program, not all factories will be able to be saved. But the Bucharest Mechanical Plant belongs to the state and has a new contract. The Cugir arms factory was dying, it has a new contract. The Sadu Mechanical Plant was dying, and I know it very well, it has a new contract. The Mangalia Naval Shipyard was driven into the wall by the Romanian politician”, he stated Radu Miruţă, quoted by News.ro.
He specified that 60% of the amount that goes through the SAFE programs for endowment of the Army will be used for products made in our country and that later we will also benefit from license transfer for those products.
When asked who in the Government proposed to CSAT that the Rheinmetall company benefit from contracts worth 5.6 billion euros, Radu Miruţă replied that the paper left the Chancellery of the Prime Minister.
Asked about the person who signed the document, Miruţă said that there are several institutions involved, including the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economy, the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior.
SAFE (Security Action For Europe) is a loan program with a total budget of 150 billion euros, designed by the European Union to strengthen the European defense industry and for the European defense system to be more solid, in the short term, until 2030. Romania has been allocated 16.6 billion euros, the second application in terms of value from the total of those submitted.
The Ministry of Defense has established 16 programs from the list of European funding for military acquisitions for which it requires Parliament's approval. Of the total of 8.33 billion euros, no less than 5.69 billion go to the German company Rheinmetall, for 7 distinct programs, with different degrees of localization of production in Romania.
