On 10 November, exactly seven months after the first face-to-face partner meeting at Jable Castle in Slovenia in March, the EUCTI Consortium met again, this time in Brussels. During the seven months, the Consortium held an online partner meeting in June and informally met every month in the form of EUCTI morning coffee, an informal online platform for exchanging ideas about the project, updating project partners on training courses, and networking.
As the second year of the project is approaching its end and training activities are all under wraps, the timing of the meeting was perfect. Residential aspect of it provided an opportunity to discuss past and future project activities more in-depth and to meet with relevant stakeholders outside of the Consortium.
Partner Meeting Attendance
The EUCTI Secretariat was joined by representatives of Austrian Centre for Peace (ACP), Centre for European Perspective (CEP), the Clingendael Institute, CMC Finland, Egmont Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), and Center for International Peace Operations (Zif Berlin). Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) provided all their inputs before the meeting. This time though, the Consortium was joined also by representatives of different EU institutions and services. It had the pleasure to receive firsthand information from representatives of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Security and Defence Policy, the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), and European Commission, Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI).
The meeting was opened by Mr Markko Kallonen, EUCTI project coordinator, and Mr Urban Vertič, Slovenian Representative to the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management (CIVCOM). Permanent Representation of the Republic of Slovenia to the EU kindly offered to host the meeting in their premises, for which we thank them.
Partner Meeting Agenda
The meeting agenda envisioned discussion on the project updates and past training activities, to which one 3rd country activity was added this year – Training of Trainers in Kinshasa, DRC for members of École de Formation Électorale en Afrique Centrale (EFEAC, Eng. The Electoral Training School in Central Africa) and other international (non-governmental and civil society) organizations operating in DRC. There was a fruitful discussion on the updates from the working groups and on the continuation of training and other visbility activities.
In 2023, the third year of the project, we plan to continue implementing need-based and in-country training courses. We are looking forward to many more opportunities to exchange expertise and knowledge, work on our visibility to expand our network and of course, continue encouraging experts joining mission abroad to expand their expertise and never stop learning.
