The French Embassy in Bucharest says that no formal complaint about the living arrangements at the Cincu base has so far been filed by the French troops there, told Agerpres.
The embassy reports in a press statement released on Tuesday that the decision to deploy the French troops was taken very quickly. President Emmanuel Macron's announcement was made on February 25, and on February 28, four days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, France deployed the "Spearhead" battalion of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force, as part of the AIGLE mission.
Consisting of 500 soldiers, the battalion was initially deployed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, located in Constanta County, some 100 kilometres from Romania's border with Ukraine. However, in a short time, the Cincu base was found to be the solution that offered the most guarantees for maintaining a long-term NATO military presence.
On May 2, an engineer detachment started works on the Cincu base so that it can house between 800 and 1,000 soldiers until the end of the year.
The construction of new NATO facilities and infrastructure at Cincu entailed harsh living conditions for the French troops, but the works are being completed. The difficulties at the beginning of the mission have now been overcome, and the living arrangements for the French soldiers at Cincu developed positively in the past six months.
France is responsible for camping, feeding and other services at Cincu, in line with NATO procedures, and Romania, as the host country, offers what France demands, according to the French Embassy.
"Since the installation of the AIGLE mission in Romania, the media have always been invited to report on this base, during media day type events or individually, and communication has always been open," concludes the statement.