VS: Welcome to Romania and to your Congress.
Sergent Major Minna Nenonen :
I’m the president of CISOR. Our cooperation in NATO and at that level is going further all the time, and it’s actually going better and better.

VS: Wwhat is the perception of NATO or of the military reserve?

Gl. (r) dr. Virgiliu-Marian Buciuman: I would like to stress what I already said yesterday when my association became a member of CIOR. Thank you, President, for this once again.
Being a member of such a confederation, as you can see here in the hall, means that we are sharing the same values. This means that we can contribute and add value to the endeavours of these confederations in order to fulfil the ambitions within the general framework of NATO.

VS: What is the role and place of military reservists in society in your country?

Sergent Major Minna Nenonen: Actually, we have a very large reserve in Finland.
We have 900,000 reservists, and our population is 5.5 million, so that means almost 20 percent of our population are reservists. It’s everywhere in Finland at the moment.

VS: Thank you. Nice. And in Romania?

Gl. (r) dr. Virgiliu-Marian Buciuman: In Romania, the associative movement of military reservists is represented primarily by my association — the National Reserve and Retired Military Personnel Association — which is the largest and most representative association within the armed forces, with more than 2,000 members.
The exact number of reservists is evolving depending on changes in the legislative framework, so it cannot be settled at a fixed figure for the moment.
However, the general idea is that, taking into account the current international context, there is a need to improve the legislation in order to have a better prepared reserve.

VS: And now, what is the purpose of this Congress in Bucharest?

Sergent Major Minna Nenonen:
This Congress offers us the opportunity, especially through our meetings, to learn something from Romania.
You have been very hospitable to us here. Yesterday morning we had a leadership presentation, a logistics forum, and the symposium was especially interesting.
The idea, of course, in these days is to look at what is happening in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia, and what we can learn from that.

VS: Thank you. And for you?

Gl. (r) dr. Virgiliu-Marian Buciuman:
For us, the CIOR Congress and other congresses have marked historical significance for my association, because we became a member of CIOR and we are also a member of CIMIC.
This means that for the future we have a new task: to present and to improve the Romanian Armed Forces.

VS: Thank you. And last question: What do relations with Romania mean to you?

Sergent Major Minna Nenonen:
It means a lot to me personally, and I know it means a lot to my country and to SIZER as well.
I’m so proud that we can cooperate with Romania. You have a lot of things we can learn from you, and I know that cooperation with you has already started very well. So I’m ready for a lot more.

VS:
Thank you.
And for you, General, what is the relationship with NATO countries?

Gl. (r) dr. Virgiliu-Marian Buciuman:
They are very good.
As a matter of fact, we succeeded in adding value to their endeavours while at the same time gaining experience and improving our own way of handling reserve-related issues.
More than that, the role of reservists has acquired a new concept in Romania.
We have to move from treating the reserve simply as a societal asset to treating it as a strategic asset for society.
So we have to work on that.

VS:
Thank you very much for this interview, and good luck to the CIOR Congress.
Thank you very much.