The NOSTRUM programme was designed to connect Moldova (and Ukraine) to the security community by promoting reform of security-sector governance through training and education. Irrespective of aspirations to accede to the EU or NATO, Moldova and Ukraine are facing enormous challenges to do away with a Soviet heritage in shaping their security-sector. These challenges are: to make their armed forces and broader security-sector (i) affordable in light of other priorities, (ii) appropriate to the strategic circumstances and (iii) acceptable to society-at-large. Including the important notion of democratic oversight of the security-sector these issues all belong to security-sector reform now part and parcel of the norms and values prevailing in the evolving European ‘security community’.

The NOSTRUM programme had a two-fold purpose (regarding process benefits such as network-building as naturally included). The first was to promote democratic governance of the security-sector in Moldova and Ukraine by improving the capacity of ‘key’ groups to exercise civilian oversight through a sequence of workshops. These workshops were based, among others, on three 'neighbouring or neighbourhood' countries' experience. The second of these objectives was to create an opportunity for security experts from Moldova and Ukraine to ‘extract’ lessons learned from Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia on security-sector reform experiences and ‘strategic circumstances’ in light of imminent enlargements