The Embassy of Georgia to the Republic of Slovenia and the Centre for European Perspective invite you to join an interactive moderated discussion with Mr Nikoloz Samkharadze, Chairperson of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Parliament of Georgia, that will take place on Monday, 5 December 2022, at 12.00 at Jable Castle.
The moderated discussion will focus on the current security challenges and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Georgia was the first to experience Russian aggressive and bellicose policies first-hand with full-scale Russian military aggression in 2008 and remains partly under Russian occupation. As such, it is also on the frontline of the hybrid war Russia wages, dealing with the onslaught of disinformation campaigns that threaten to further destabilize the country and the region. What are the developments in the region? How will the security situation develop in Georgia, the region and Europe more broadly?
At the same time, Georgia’s commitment to European values was recognized on 23 June 2022, when the European Council took a truly historical decision by granting a European Perspective to Georgia, already a NATO aspirant country. Is the EU doing enough? What are the perspectives on EU enlargement?
Join us as we discuss this and more on 5 December 2022 at Jable Castle.
RSVP: We invite you to register your participation in the discussion via email at [email protected] until 3 December 2022.
Once again, government communicators, journalists and members of civil society from Western Balkan countries gathered to address the challenge of disinformation.
The disruptive nature of disinformation requires a whole-of-society approach and cooperation among different sectors. All too often, members of government, journalists and civil society members work separately from each other, yet striving towards the same goal, which is to protect democratic institutions and diminish the space for disinformation.
It is for this reason that CEP initiated a project ‘Strengthening societal resilience and countering foreign perpetrated disinformation in six Western Balkan countries’. In the scope of the project, a conference took place in Bled from 22 to 24 November 2022.
The conference was attended by 37 participants from Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). All of the participants deal with the challenge of disinformation daily – whether as government communicators, fact-checkers or journalists.
The conference was divided into two parts – in the first part, several discussions with the aim of understanding disinformation, why it is done and how it impacts our societies were held. At the second part of the conference, participants started working on their ‘Country disinformation reports’, where they applied the insights gained from the first part. This is not the last conference in the scope of the project. In the next editions, the participants will continue writing reports on disinformation and expand them with sections on tools and tactics to counter and prevent disinformation, as well as sections on coordination necessary among different sectors.
The project is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia through development cooperation funds.
Part of our Peace and Security team attended the final EUPCST Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Between 22 and 24 November representatives of 23 Consortium partners and their coordinator, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee gathered to discuss past activities, the evaluation process and to officially close the project.
After three years (2019 – 2022) EUPCST project is nearing its end. During these three years Consortium members, comprised of national gendarmeries, police forces, and civilian organisations, trained 768 training participants. Among them 537 or 70 % were male and 231 or 30% were female, 50% had a police background, 25% were gendarmes, and 25% were civilians.
The overall aim of the project was to enable civilian crisis management mission and stabilization actions staff to work in a more efficient, effective, and sustainable manner to achieve their mandates. It facilitated capacity building within different organisations active in the security sector. It also allowed for international knowledge exchange, as members of different organisations trained together, and shared their expertise at international conferences and various workshops.
In the meanwhile, we were also busy preparing evaluation forms, gathering relevant information, and sharing it with relevant stakeholders within the Consortium as well as preparing yearly evaluation reports. The final task remains to draft the final evaluation report.
We are proud we were able to successfully contribute to equipping staff of police forces, gendarmeries, and civilians with the necessary skills for their participation in international crisis management operations of the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union, and other international organisations. We hope all will be able to use this knowledge and expertise to make the world a better place.
In the scope of the European Digital Diplomacy Exchange (EDDE) project, we will organize a training for North Macedonian government communicators, which will take place in person in Skopje, North Macedonia, on 28 November and 29 November 2022.
The training, which focuses on digital communication, will enhance both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of government communicators through several interactive sessions and workshops.
The theoretical part will focus on the digital future, policy as lifestyle, influencer marketing, digital campaign development and social media analytics. Each topic will have a practical follow-up by local representatives, who will showcase the local application of the theory and selected case studies. In the practice part, we will boost photography, videography and graphic design skills and, finally, look at different tools and approaches to identifying and fighting against disinformation.
The project is a result of the cooperation between the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana and the Centre for European Perspective.
The project is partially financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia in the scope of the international development cooperation program activities.
Once again, stakeholders involved in the co-creation of the information environment from 6 Western Balkans countries are meeting at the Conference on countering disinformation which will take place next week, from the 22nd to the 24th of November 2022, in Bled, Slovenia. It will bring together government, civil society, and media from 6 Western Balkans countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia).
The conference is organised in the scope of the project “Strengthening societal resilience and countering foreign perpetrated disinformation in 6 Western Balkans countries”, which was launched in 2020. This conference is going to focus on identifying and understanding disinformation and its impact.
The speakers from across Europe and wider will join us and share their expertise with participants about the most recent developments in the field.
The distinguishing feature of the project is the whole-of-society approach, connecting governments, civil society, and media in each country and across all 6 Western Balkans countries. This collaboration is of great importance when addressing such a complex issue as disinformation and enhancing resilience to external influences. Other core activities of the projects are providing capacity building to governments in Western Balkans and helping to create a national mechanism for countering disinformation in each country, specialized trainings for stakeholders, and creation of a regional platform to exchange information.
The project is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia through development cooperation funds.
Workshops will be held in Serbia from 23 to 25 November 2022, concluding a two-year cycle of international development assistance of the Republic of Slovenia, in the framework of which the Serbian Police, in cooperation with the Slovenian Police, developed, established, and implemented a new patrol management system. The system is based on modern technology and EU standards. Its main purpose is to enable police officers to respond more effectively to the needs of people when their life, safety, or property is threatened while also ensuring the greater safety of police officers when performing their work in the field.
The patrol management system is now used by the organizational units of 14 of the 27 police directorates in the interior of the country, as well as by the organizational units of the Border Police Directorate.
The final workshops will aim to review the status, assess the increase in a patrol management capacity, and review the planning of further activities to maintain, expand and continuously advance the patrol management system.
The project is part of the program activities of international development cooperation, financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Republic of Slovenia.
