Subscribe
On a Friday in early October 2026, the judicial liquidator CITR announced that Damen Shipyards Mangalia had been awarded to Rheinmetall Real Estate Romania for 138.03 million euros, excluding VAT. The figure sits roughly 46 million euros below the initial valuation of about 184 million euros that had guided earlier sale attempts.
The yard’s troubles were not sudden. Damen Shipyards Mangalia, majority owned by the Romanian state at 51% with the Dutch group holding the remaining 49% and operational control, entered insolvency in June 2024. Creditors rejected a reorganization plan, and the Constanța Tribunal declared bankruptcy in April 2026. By summer, the last of the roughly 1,011 employees had received termination notices. Earlier auctions at the higher price drew no serious bids. Only after the procedure shifted to allow a starting price at 75% of the assessed value did a buyer appear. Rheinmetall, which had stayed away from the previous rounds, secured the asset that includes three dry docks, quays, halls, workshops, and inventories.
The government welcomed the outcome. Officials at Victoria Palace described it as a major step toward relaunching one of Romania’s most important industrial assets after years of financial difficulty and job losses. They tied the acquisition directly to negotiations under the European SAFE program. A contract worth approximately 920 million euros (excluding VAT) covers two offshore patrol vessels and two diver-support vessels, with delivery targeted by 2030. Ministers framed the deal as serving Black Sea security, strengthening the NATO eastern flank, and opening the door to technology transfer and local production rather than pure imports.
AUR sees a different sequence of events. In a statement issued the day after the sale, the party accused the government of having managed the shipyard’s situation defectively, allowing one of Romania’s key strategic industrial capacities to reach bankruptcy and then be awarded at a steep discount without concrete guarantees for its future. The difference of roughly 46 million euros, AUR argues, requires public explanations: the evaluations used, the conditions of the successive auctions, the justification for the price reduction, and a check on whether competent institutions respected the law. Specialized AUR commissions asked the government to state who bears responsibility, what investments and jobs are actually guaranteed, and what tangible benefits Romanian industry will receive.
The party has pressed these points before. In spring 2025, deputy Dan Tănasă submitted a parliamentary question seeking clarity on the yard’s prospects, ongoing investor talks, and the status of hundreds of workers then on technical unemployment. The Ministry of Economy answered in May 2025, yet the subsequent bankruptcy and discounted sale have, in AUR’s view, underscored rather than resolved the earlier concerns. The formation does not reject foreign investment as such. It insists that Romania needs a functioning yard, retained specialists, local suppliers, and long-term orders. A public relaunch plan should spell out the value of additional investments, the timeline for restarting activity, the number of jobs, the mix of civil and military contracts, technology transfer commitments, and the new operator’s obligations. Clarification is also sought on the use of public land and on outstanding wage claims still circulating through the bankruptcy proceedings. For the 920-million-euro naval package, AUR wants details on how much of the work will actually occur in Romania, what production and maintenance capacities will be built or upgraded, and how Romanian suppliers will participate. Modernizing the army, the party maintains, must be accompanied by the development of the national defense industry.
That larger procurement context is already under formal scrutiny. In early September 2026, AUR filed a criminal complaint with the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) concerning possible irregularities in the preparation, selection of economic operators, negotiation, award, financing, and execution of projects under Romania’s SAFE program. The program gives Romania access to up to 16.68 billion euros in EU loan financing. Among the specific issues raised are the concentration of high-value contracts toward the Rheinmetall group, totaling around 5.7 billion euros across several agreements, and questions about how specifications were drawn, which alternative suppliers were considered, why prices shifted during negotiations, and what binding production and technology-transfer obligations were secured. The complaint also asks prosecutors to examine possible links between the award of the naval contracts and the eventual transaction involving the Mangalia assets, and whether the state’s patrimonial interests were adequately protected. AUR has requested that DNA obtain the full SAFE investment plan and its successive versions, complete project files, necessity reports, market consultations, offers, evaluations, and contracts, including electronic metadata, to determine whether outcomes were effectively predetermined or whether documents presented to European institutions accurately reflect the underlying decisions. Possible offenses cited include abuse of office, intellectual forgery, use of forged documents, false statements, and acts against the financial interests of the European Union. The party stresses that it is asking for verification rather than asserting that crimes have already been proven.
The government, for its part, continues to present the combination of the SAFE contracts and the shipyard sale as a coherent industrial strategy: equipment for the Romanian Navy, work retained or created at home, and a path out of bankruptcy for a strategic site. Whether that path materializes depends on the still unpublished details of investment volume, job creation, local content, and enforcement mechanisms. Until those figures and timelines are placed on the table, the difference between a rescue and a discounted handover of a national industrial asset remains a matter of competing interpretations and, in AUR’s case, of a pending DNA inquiry into the broader framework that made the sale possible.