Croatia was welcomed as the 23rd member of the CoE, the workplan for 2024 was adopted by members and the procedure for the selection of the next Director of the CoE was approved at the seventh General Meeting.
Against the backdrop of the adoption of the new Civilian CSDP Compact on 22 May 2023, the CoE has conducted its first full day workshop in its efforts to support its members, in this case Sweden, to develop their national plan on how to implement the commitments under the new Compact.
The CoE is preparing its seventh General Meeting at the Permanent Representation of Spain in the EU including a recap of 2022/23 and an outlook on the next months and 2024. The General Meeting is followed by the Autumn Forum focusing on Deliverable #3 of the Compact – the "scalable and modular approach".
The CoE, together with the Swedish Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), organised a Civilian CSDP Summer Forum in Stockholm. The event under the auspices of the Swedish Council Presidency took place on 15/16 June and brought together around 75 representatives from 23 EU Member States as well as the EEAS, Eurojust and Frontex to discuss what capabilities are needed within EU Member States to make civilian CSDP missions of the EU stronger, more inclusive, more effective and efficient.
The two-day visit, which was part of the CoE’s active outreach towards its members, underlined the close relationship between the CoE and Finland and built upon State Secretary Johanna Sumuvuori‘s and Director-General Laura Yli-Vakkuri's respective visits to the CoE last year.
The CoE’s workplan for 2023 was unanimously approved by its members, who shared positive feedback and expressed appreciation for the support they have been receiving in the past year.
The mentoring programme for women in CSDP Missions was completed with a closing workshop that brought together mentors and mentees to discuss their experiences during the eight-month online mentoring programme. It was the second time the CoE conducted the mentoring programme together with CPCC. This year 32 participants from 10 civilian missions took part in the programme.
The CoE co-organised with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of Austria on 27-28 October 2022 an interactive forum to provide an informal exchange platform for EU Member States to facilitate upcoming formal negotiations on the new Civilian CSDP Compact.
The focus of the third and last workshop of this series was on the operational level between EU Member States and the CSDP missions: how can the EU Member States benefit from seconding personnel to civilian CSDP missions and how do missions benefit from the expertise of the international secondees?
EU Member States discussed good practice examples of strategic communication at the national level to make civilian missions better known among general public and increase women's representation.
