NATO Defence College Foundation hosted a conference “Black Sea and Balkan Perspectives: A Strategic Region”

02.08.2021

ROME – Conference “Black Sea and Balkan Perspectives: A Strategic Region”, organised by the NATO Defense College Foundation, on Wednesday, 28 July in the Italian capital. RT: @NATOFoundation, #blackseaandbalkans, Session 1: Competition for influence among great powers. Session 1 with Alexandra von Nahmen moderating the discussions between Helena Legarda, Dmitri Trenin and Amer Kapetanovic.

ROME – Conference “Black Sea and Balkan Perspectives: A Strategic Region”, organised by the NATO Defense College Foundation, on Wednesday, 28 July in the Italian capital.

The conference, organised under the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic, will consist of three panel discussions.

Structured into three panels, the discussions started with a first panel dedicated to framing the current and future role of the EU in the Black Sea and Balkan regions with respect to the strategic competition among great powers (namely Russia, China, Middle Eastern countries) currently unfolding in the area.

The second panel will delve into the challenges of regional security, taking into account the role of NATO, the protection of critical infrastructure and of freedom of navigation.

Finally, the third one will discuss how international and regional cooperation can effectively tackle a very specific and distinct threat to the security of the area: powerful non-state actors, often helped by external organised groups, especially those dealing in trafficking and organised crime (arms, drugs, money laundering also through crypto-currencies, migrant exploitation, etc.).

“The Balkan region has been, since the Yugoslav wars, limited just to the Western Balkans… Times are ripe to pick up a more concrete and strategically founded vision of the region: a peninsula delimitated by the Adriatic, Aegean and Black seas, whose security is inevitably interconnected and interdependent”, the announcement reads.

“These economies share the same strategic interests: the viability and sustainability of their economies; the demographic decline and youth emigration often due to bad governance; the urgency to recover from the pandemic-induced depression; the need to diversify energy sources, especially the more polluting ones; the threat by organised crime; the importance of a balanced relationship with big external powers like China and Russia”, it is added.

Among others, the participants of the conference will be Helena Legarda, Senior Analyst, China Security Project at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, Dmitri Trenin Director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, Zoran Jolevski, former Minister of Defence of the Republic of North Macedonia, Walter Kemp, Director of the South East Europe Observatory at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime in Geneva, Amer Kapetanovic, Head of political Department - Regional Cooperation Council (RCC).

The conference is organised within the project Strategic Balkans, which NATO Defense College Foundation has been implementing since 2014.

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