8. 11. 2017 | Bled Strategic Forum, PR
On Friday, 17 November 2017, a roundtable discussion “The Evolving and Ever-present Cyber Security” will be taking place within the framework of the Bled Strategic Forum international conference in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, Centre for European Perspective and Club Alpbach Senza Confini. The event will start with small refreshments at 16h in the Cafe of the City Museum of Ljubljana.
The roundtable will discuss main trends in cyber security and ways in which countries and companies are dealing with cyber threats. The ways in which IoT, block chain and cyber warfare are changing our lives and shaping our future will be explored.
The discussion will feature:
- Mr Daniel Cohen, Head of the Strategy program at the Institute for International Diplomacy and a researcher at Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Institute
- Major General Dobran Božič, Director of the Government Office for the Protection of Classified Information
- Mr Gorazd Božič, Slovenian Computer Emergency Response Team
- Mr Peter Geršak, International Business Machines Corporation, Slovenia
Please note, the discussion will be held in English.
RSVP: We kindly ask you to confirm your participation at by Tuesday, 14 November.
2. 11. 2017 | IECEU, PR
On November 8th, over a hundred participants will attend the conference ‘Effectiveness and Inclusivity of EU Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention’ at the Scotland House in Brussels. During the conference, policy makers, academics and civil society practitioners will present the findings of two EU-funded Horizon 2020 projects IECEU – Improving the Effectiveness of Capabilities in EU Conflict Prevention and WOSCAP – Whole-of-Society Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding.
Aiming to improve peacebuilding through sustainable, comprehensive and innovative means, the projects will present recommendations around the cases of Ukraine, Mali, Yemen, Kosovo, Georgia, Afghanistan, Palestinian Territories and Bosnia and Herzegovina through a series of panel discussions. The panels will address the EU effectiveness in conflict prevention through discussions around Security Sector Reform, Multi-Track Diplomacy, EU integrated approach, inclusivity and local ownership.
“Peacebuilding and conflict prevention need to involve a whole range of different actors in society. It is relevant because much of the discussion around intervention, state building, peacebuilding, conflict prevention, talks about issues like local ownership of policies, the legitimacy of interventions and the need for societal resilience. A whole of society approach speaks to that need to include the people dimension in peacebuilding, it is not just politics and policies, it is policies, politics and people”, said dr. Mary Martin, Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Stefano Tomat, Head of Division of PRISM (Prevention of conflicts, Rule of law, SSR, Integrated approach, Stabilisation and Mediation) from the European External Action Service, will provide the official opening of the conference. After this, different panels will give insights in the results and recommendations of the WOSCAP and IECEU projects.
Dr. Rok Zupančič, University of Ljubljana, described IECEU project as a unique research, with nobody before analysing the CSDP missions and operations that extensively, while he is also looking forward hearing the results at the final conference.
WOSCAP project focused on three types of existing EU interventions, namely Multi‐Track Diplomacy, Security Sector Reform, and governance reform through a combination of desk and field research in Mali, Yemen, Georgia, Ukraine, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Honduras and produced a tailored set of recommendations to improve the EU’s civilian means for conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
IECEU analysed best practices and lessons learned of eight on-going and past European Union CSDP missions and operations in the Western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo), Africa (Congo, Libya, South Sudan and Central African Republic), Palestinian Territories as well as Afghanistan with the aim of providing a catalogue of practices, new solutions and approaches for the EU to guarantee long-term stability through conflict prevention and peacebuilding with special focus on pooling and sharing as well as civil-military cooperation.
25. 10. 2017 | PR, ROSE
After the introductory activities in the field of informing and educating of the key stakeholders involved in the exchange of eInvoices, “Readiness Of Slovenian E-Invoicing” (ROSE) Action continues to develop new Slovenian standard for eInvoices and exchange hub for eInvoices sent in the EU standard.
New Slovenian standard for eInvoices only a month after announcement of the EN 16931 in the Official Journal of the EU
The European Commission announced the European standard EN 16931 with an executive decision on 16 October 2017. While Slovenian businesses currently use the standard eSlog 1.6, ROSE Action will upgrade the standard in accordance with the recently announced European standard to the new version eSlog 2.0. In order to do so, ROSE Action partners are concluding the preparation of the XML scheme of the new standard and mapping tables between the two standards (1.6 and 2.0), mapping tables for eSlog 2.0 and two eInvoicing syntaxes complyiant with the European standard EN 16931. eSLOG 2.0 documentation will be prepared in Slovenian and English language for software solution and services providers to enable integration of the new eSLOG standard into their solutions.
Exchange hub for the exchange of eInvoices for contracting entities
The Exchange hub will be implemented to support contracting entities, which up until now weren’t obliged to receive eInvoices. The hub will allow organizations to receive and to send eInvoices in eSLOG 2.0 and in other syntaxes for which mapping tables will be prepared in Activity of upgrading of the Slovenian national eInvoicing standard to eSLOG 2.0. It will enable also the visualization of the eInvoice and will be linked to the eInvoice recipients’ entity database. The system will be open in order to enable integration into various ERP systems, accounting programs, and other software solutions.
Educational activities and awareness raising
Since the relatively new European Directive 2014/55/EU brings some new obligations for the European public service providers, ROSE Action aims to approach informing and education of the subjects, affected by the new legislation, in a very active manner. We have already announced the first educative workshops around Slovenia, the first two will take place on 24 November 2017 in Novo mesto and on 29 November 2017 in Murska Sobota. Workshops aim to address the content of the European Directive on eInvoicing in Public Procurement and technical solutions that will enable receipt of the eInvoices in EU standard in Slovenia.
In order to inform the interested audiences and stakeholders in a comprehensive manner, the ROSE Action webpage was recently updated and can be accessed at www.roseslovenia.eu. It offers information on the upcoming reforms and follows the activities of the ROSE Action.
The topics above were discussed at today’s 5th Steering Board meeting of the ROSE Action, a Connecting European Facility Action, co-financed by the European Union and implemented by the Public Payments Administration of the Republic of Slovenia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, ZZI d.o.o., Mojdenar IT d.o.o. and Centre for European Perspective.
Read this article in Slovene language.
20. 10. 2017 | Danube, PR
The 6th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) that took place on 18-19 October 2017 in Budapest, jointly organised by Hungary (current Presidency of the EUSDR), the European Commission and the Danube Transnational Programme, concluded with intense discussions and future challenges in the post 2020 period.
Under the title ‘A secure, connected and prospering Danube Region’, the Forum emphasised different challenges related to energy security, transportation development, clean connectivity issues and financing opportunities.
On the first day, ministers in charge of the EUSDR adopted a joint statement setting out principles and priorities for the future – regional energy security, infrastructure development and clean connectivity, which can be boosted with an optimised use of EU funds. The plenary session on the second day was followed by DTP Capitalization Workshops, each dedicated to one of the 12 thematic poles. Main objective of the capitalization strategy is to connect projects with similar objectives and target audiences to have greater outreach and reach a critical mass of people interested in the topic. Thematic Pole 11 workshop, Participatory and Local Governance, that is closely connected with the targets of the Priority Area 10 of the EUSDR, discussed a problem of measuring participatory governance. A problem of collecting evidence is one of the main bottlenecks. The workshop was led by pole leader Blaž Barborič, that is managing Attractive Danube project, followed by AgriGo4Cities and RARE project representatives and a key note speaker dr. Janez Nared from Anton Melik Geographical Institute, who shared rich experiences from their various projects. Priority Area 10 coordinators together gave an input on how to build inclusive approaches as well as they briefly reported on their activities. In the scope of Funding opportunities for the pillars of the EUSDR, Priority Area 10 collaborated in presenting financial prospects for the Pillar IV, Well-Governed Danube Region.
Lastly, the Forum closed with a challenging debate on Macro-Regional Strategies in post 2020 context that was discussed by representatives of all 4 macro-regions and European Commission. Presidency wheel was handed over to Bulgaria who will preside and coordinate EUSDR activities one year.
Get an insight into the Forum in the gallery below:
19. 10. 2017 | BIH - Entrepreneurs, Kosovo - Entrepreneurs, PR
The Center for European Perspective (CEP) will continue its work to support the development of an integrated start-up ecosystem in the countries of the Western Balkans. With the new project, which is financially supported by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, CEP, in addition to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, will spread its activities to Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia.
The main aim of the project titled ‘Establishing an Integrated Start-up Ecosystem in the Western Balkans’ is to establish, consolidate and integrate the start-up ecosystem in the Western Balkans, focusing on start-up entrepreneurs and young people with innovative business ideas. The cooperation between young entrepreneurs in the Western Balkan region is insufficient, very poorly connected and not systematically stimulated, although this is exactly that what young entrepreneurs want. The same derives from CEP’s previous experience and the cooperation with young entrepreneurs from BiH and Kosovo over the past years, which was financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia in the scope of international development cooperation.
The project will be implemented from October 2017 to the end of March 2018. CEP will conduct a series of promotional activities, educational events and will support establishment of a strong network of key start-up stakeholders in all countries in the Western Balkans.
Read this article in Slovene language.
18. 10. 2017 | Montenegro - finance, PR
Three experts from the Bank of Slovenia hold a two-day workshop and advise colleagues from the Central Bank of Montenegro in Podgorica on how to harmonize the area of banking supervision and regulation with the requirements of the EU acquis. In the accession negotiations with the EU, the area is covered by Chapter 9: Financial services.
The two-day advisory workshop (17–18 October 2017) is carried out in the framework of the CEP’s project “Assistance to Montenegro in negotiations on accession to the EU 2017”. The workshop’s main focus is the banking supervision and regulation, in particular the methodology for banking supervision and the instructions for the supervision bodies.
The project is part of the CEP program activities financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the scope of international development cooperation.
Read this article in Slovene language.
