Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said on Wednesday that he is not the partisan of second-hand acquisition, explaining that "we are too poor to afford cheap things". The remark came in a speech about military equipment acquisition. Defense Ministry officials said, at the beginning of the week, that some of the planes they will buy may be second-hand.

The first thing to do is to analyze the costs for the state budget in the acquisition and maintenance of military equipment, then to decide whether to buy it or not, the PM said.

"I believe that - just as well as we may not become Europe's garbage dump for old cars - we should not buy used military equipment with a short life cycle. Of course that the existing equipment, I mean the MiG planes, are widely obsolete, from a technical point of view, and modern planes must be bought, but that is the very reason why I am cautious about buying second hand planes". Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said on Wednesday that he is not the partisan of second-hand acquisition, explaining that "we are too poor to afford cheap things". The remark came in a speech about military equipment acquisition. Defense Ministry officials said, at the beginning of the week, that some of the planes they will buy may be second-hand.

The first thing to do is to analyze the costs for the state budget in the acquisition and maintenance of military equipment, then to decide whether to buy it or not, the PM said.

"I believe that - just as well as we may not become Europe's garbage dump for old cars - we should not buy used military equipment with a short life cycle. Of course that the existing equipment, I mean the MiG planes, are widely obsolete, from a technical point of view, and modern planes must be bought, but that is the very reason why I am cautious about buying second hand planes".