Romania’s multifunctional corvettes were sunk before they were built. Do the authorities have “big” promises from the Americans? The French and the Dutch are out of the game

Bucharest, August 8, 2023 – Romania canceled the “Multifunctional Corvette” contract – known more briefly as the corvette contract, and in our publication you will find several articles under the title “Corvette War”. Because since the launch of the idea, more than six years ago and until now, the project to equip the Romanian naval forces with modern and high-performance equipment has suffered numerous controversies and even “battles” in the courts to win this business of magnitude.
Today, the Ministry of National Defense announced: “The contracting authority from the Ministry of National Defense approved on Monday, August 7, the cancellation of the specific procedure related to the essential endowment program “Multifunctional Corvette”, proposed by the report of the evaluation commission established on the basis of GD no. 48 of February 15, 2018″, the Ministry of Defense announced.
The cited source specified that he made the decision to cancel the procedure “since the bidder declared the winner did not sign the framework agreement within the terms requested by the contracting authority and the funds necessary to declare the economic operator in the next place as the winner were not identified”. “The decision to cancel the specific procedure was communicated to the three bidders on Tuesday, August 8”, the Ministry of Defense also specified.
Romania first talked about buying the corvettes in 2016, but the procedures were accelerated in 2018. A year later, the French giant Naval Group and Constanța Naval Shipyard won the tender, but the contract has not been signed until today. The transaction is important for Romania, which now has only one corvette. In addition, the program includes the modernization of the two frigates Regina Maria and King Ferdinand.
In April 2018, the Constanţa Naval Shipyard concluded an association agreement with Naval Group from France to participate in the acquisition process of the multifunctional corvette program launched by the Romanian Government. Damen (Netherlands) and Fincantieri (Italy) also participated in the acquisition process. The contract, worth over 1 billion euros, was awarded, in July 2019, to the Constanța Naval Shipyard and Naval Group association.
According to official data from the program, “the ships will be built in Romania within seven years, based on a technology transfer for the construction, equipment and maintenance of corvettes”. Moreover, the first ship should be delivered only three years after the signing of the contract.
It’s just that the major financial dissensions in the Association, combined with the pandemic crisis, made it impossible to reach a consensus and sign the agreement. The Ministry of National Defense has extended the deadline for the Association to sign several times, throughout 2022. Of course, this did not happen.
The tender was started after in 2016 the contract was initially awarded to the Dutch company Damen, present in Romania at the Galați Naval Shipyard where it already builds combat ships for naval forces around the world. The Dutch offered Romania Sigma 10514 corvettes.
The legislative elections brought at the time a new architecture of the Parliament which achieved the annulment of the direct agreement and the designation of the winner following an auction.
From previous experiences, the decision of the Ministry of National Defense may have as its argument a specific proposal from the US, “our strategic partner” that “eats” billions of dollars from the country’s budget annually. American companies are the best placed in the budget of 2.5% of Romania’s GDP that is allocated for endowment of the army. And this without any profit for the Romanian defense industry, which has been in an obvious decline for the last 30 years.