European Union launched its first CSDP mission back in January 2003, the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since then, European Union deployed 37 civilian and military missions of different types, be it capacity building, monitoring, training or border assistance mission, that operated only couple of months up to several years, from small to really large ones. But all the missions had something in common: they all relied on the knowledge, experiences and skills of the mission’s personnel.
At the moment there are 11 civilian and 6 military missions operating under the EU flag.
EU Civilian Training Initiative (EUCTI) is EU-financed project that commenced its activities in January 2021 and is planned to last three years. Its main objective is to contribute to enhanced position of the EU as a peace actor through better prepared professionals that are supporting the EU CSDP missions in achieving its mandates. This will be reached through almost 30 training activities, developed and designed specifically for the mission that will voice a training need, and implemented in the mission or in the region. Several other project activities are foreseen, mainly related to the development on new pedagogical approaches to the training, evaluation and standardization, as well as support for 3rd country training institutions. EUCTI consortium consists of eight renowned partners holding solid experience on developing and delivering civilian crisis management training.
As organizing demand-driven training activities in current times of global pandemic is not the easiest task, a virtual kick-off meeting will be held on Thursday, 11th March 2021. It aims to bring together all key stakeholders that will support, shape and streamline the EUCTI activities. On one hand it will give floor to the European Union institutions (the European Commission and European External Action Service) that will explain how they see the EUCTI activities fit in the bigger picture of the Common Security and Defence Policy. On the other hand, project partners will be invited to present their experiences and adaptation to the Covid-19 reality that affected greatly the training actions. Last, but not least, EU CSDP missions, the project’s most direct beneficiaries, and other international actors present on the ground (the UN, OSCE and African Union), will get the floor to share their training needs and practical insights from their side of the world.
We’ll be sharing the main take-aways after the meeting in a new post and a short video!
