The 13th Annual conference of CMDR COE
Date: (04-06-2025)
Since its official accreditation in 2015, the CMDR Centre of Excellence acts as a focal point of crisis management and disaster response analysis, expertise building, information and best-practices sharing. This year, the annual conference was built around a timely and thought-provoking theme: “Ensuring continuity management in a new security environment".
Placing the focus on the arising security challenges, the CMDR COE seeks to draw attention to adequate preparedness and contribute to timely adaption within the crisis management and disaster response domain to NATO’s continuous transformation.
In such context CMDR COE carried out its 13th Annual Conference on 4 June 2025. This year event encompassed three panels - Comprehensive Strategies for Modern Crisis Preparedness; CMDR COE in support of NATO Transformation; Building a Realistic Environment for Complex Crisis/Disaster Exercise Scenario.
The main purpose is to reveal beneficial practices that have been found and might be useful. Naturally, this idea reflected on the composition of the conference. Different organisations and entities have formulated their own approaches, all of which refer in general to improving capabilities in the fields of their own assets and assessments. Most national crisis response strategies emphasize the synergies of cooperation in the efficient use of limited resources, thus it is very important the roles and responsibilities to be distinct in order to be mutually complementary. The objective remains as the interagency interaction is to develop coherence and effectiveness with due regard for each actor’s area of expertise.
The Conference opening address was delivered by the Deputy Minister of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria, Mr. Radostin Iliev, who noted that combined expertise and innovative thinking are of utmost importance in developing capacities to meet the challenges to the global security. He emphasized CMDR COE’s strong position among NATO’s Centres of Excellence and highlighted the critical need to maintain comprehensive approach in response to present crises worldwide.
News
The initial planning conference for the SEESIM 14 exercise was held in Zagreb, CroatiaThe initial planning conference for the distributed computer assisted exercise South Eastern Europe Simulation Network (SEESIM 14) was held in Zagreb, Croatia. The Republic of Bulgaria is co-organizer and participates actively in the conducting of the exercise together with the Host Nation. Among the participants are also representatives of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro, Romania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, United States of America and the SEEBRIG.
The exercise is held under the auspices of the Ministers of Defence of the SEE Nations.
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CMDR COE FEBRUARY Forthcoming events- In 3-7 of February experts from the CMDR COE team will take part in the Final Planning Conference of the SABER GUARDIAN ′14 Exercise, organized by the US EUCOM and BGR LANDFORCE.
The purpose of the exercise is to train and educate civilian and military participants in planning and conducting an UN mandated Chapter VII Peace Operation/Crisis Response Operation, based on a Comprehensive Approach, and focusing on co-operation and co-ordination within an unstable environment, involving all stakeholders. The principal exercise focus is the civilian-military cooperation and coordination. The scenario supports exercising a wide range of peace operations functions (e.g. rule of law, humanitarian, etc.). The CMDR COE will contribute to achieving the exercise objectives by providing subject matter expert support in the CMDR area and by organizing distributed point for White cell.
- In 11-13 February 2014 the Civil-Military Interaction: Disaster Preparedness and Response Workshop will take place in Sofia. The workshop is sponsored by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria and the CMDR COE. The workshop comprises lectures dedicated to NATO and EU Crisis Management, role of military in civil security, risk management, as well as discussions and tabletop exercise.
Internal CMDR COE Seminar on the Crisis in SyriaThe CMDR COE organised an internal seminar which was held on 20.12.2013. The main focus of the seminar was the crisis in Syria. The CMDR COE experts discussed issued related to the chronology of the crisis; the increased influx of refugees to neighbouring countries and Bulgaria; the positions of NATO, the UN and EU; the involvement of international humanitarian organisations etc.
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Visualizing Implications of Climate Change on Military Activities and Relationships was conductedOn 11-12 December 2013, the Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence (CMDR COE) co-hosted together with US European Command (USEUCOM) and the US embassy in Bulgaria the workshop Visualizing Implications of Climate Change on Military Activities and Relationships. The opening remarks were given by the Deputy Minister of Defence of Bulgaria, Mr. Ivan Ivanov, who welcomed the participants and underlined the importance of the topics that the workshop focused on.
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