. INTRODUCTION 1. According to the provisions of the Constitution of Romania and the Law no.473/2004 on defense planning, Romania’s National Defense Strategy (hereinafter, the Strategy) represents the main instrument that substantiates defense planning at national level and ensures the strategic framework for the whole organization and coordination of the related to the country’s defense and national security, through the Supreme Council of National Defense. 2. Through its objectives and content, the Strategy refers to the country’s defense and national security as a whole. Paradigm changes that occurred in the concept of country’s defense and national security, related to the increasingly unpredictable dynamics of the security environment, inflict the need to reanalyze the concept and, in the immediate prospect, to update the national legal framework. 3. The Strategy reflects the need to promote an extensive national security concept – grounded on constitutional democracy and mutual respect between state and citizens – regarding interests related to ensuring national security in the following fields: defense (perceived in a double normative stance of national defense and collective defense), public order, intelligence, counterintelligence and security activity, education, healthcare, the economic field, the financial sector, environment and critical infrastructure. The Strategy has an integrative and multidimensional approach, whereby the defense dimension merges and mutually balances along other dimensions – public order; intelligence, counterintelligence and security activity; diplomacy; crisis management; education, healthcare and demography. 4. The need to extend the concept of national security is also motivated by ensuring convergence with the European security principles, developed in the European Security Strategy and the European Union`s Internal Security Strategy, in which security and development are defined as directly proportional. In addition, the extension of the concept of national security aims to ensure increased resilience of state institutions and civil society against possible, fortuitous or persistent, crisis situations in an unpredictable international security environment and within an intricate security context. 5. In drawing up the new Strategy we must take into consideration the change of paradigm at global level. Romania lies in a region that was defined for a long time by the presence of frozen conflicts. Today, the region is marked by active conflicts and the deterioration of the relations between NATO and the Russian Federation. Also, the presence of conflict areas within the region raises the issue of the Romanian citizens’ security. 6. At global level, terrorism has acquired new dimensions, being far from a distant phenomenon, but rather close to our space. Romanian citizens can be affected by the consequences of terrorist acts. The economic and financial crisis has in turn contributed to this paradigm change, and its effects are felt in the long term. 7. Romania is crossing a period where multiple risks, threats and vulnerabilities sometimes intersect and at times overlap, giving rise to unforeseeable effects not only at 5