ForMin Aurescu: We will try to attract the best experts to Euro-Atlantic Resilience Center

oreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu, speaking today at the 3rd Atlantic-Black Sea Security Forum, declared that Romania wants to involve in the activity of the Euro-Atlantic Resilience Center (E-ARC) that opened today in Bucharest not only the best Romanian experts, but also experts from EU and NATO members, as well from partner countries in the region, agerpres reports.

According to Aurescu, E-ARC - a project Romania has been working on for nine months now - is a body that will not compete with other centers of excellence, but will focus on specific areas.

"We will focus on: societal resilience, on our partners' resilience in terms of negative interference from outside the European and NATO space. If we want to be resilient, our neighbors and partners in the neighborhood should be resilient as well, we must help them build their own capacities to withstand and respond to risks, challenges and threats. We will focus on the resilience of infrastructure: communications infrastructure, transport infrastructure. We will also focus on areas of interest, such as the response to emerging and disruptive technologies; all these will be structured in seven working groups within the E-ARC. We will try to attract not only the best Romanian experts in the field, but also experts from the EU and NATO member states and from our partners in the region," the Foreign Minister explained the activity of E-ARC in a nutshell.

According to Aurescu, the working groups will carry out their activity in a "systemic, interconnected manner" where transport infrastructure is crucial not only for society but also for the economy and military mobility.

"As far as communication is concerned it is absolutely obvious: cyber security and the resilience of communication networks is very important to ensure the efficiency of the response in a crisis situation. We will also have a group to handle the continuity of governance and the ability to cope with crises. All these groups will work in a systemic, interconnected manner," he said.

The Minister stressed the importance of promoting best practices and counteracting inappropriate reactions, noting that during the pandemic there were also certain unilateral approaches or individualistic behaviors.

"Resilience means first and foremost getting in the best shape the good reactions we had during the crisis: more solidarity, more international cooperation. At European level - setting up the EU4Health program; at NATO level - see what the response was to the needs of member states and partners, and the NATO Pandemic Response Trust Fund was very effective in helping allies and partners. We used NATO airlift capabilities to transport medical equipment. For example, Romania was the first member country of the Alliance to use the strategic air transport capabilities to bring essential medical equipment from South Korea during the pandemic, and then we helped others because we were the first EU country to use the RescEU Mechanism and we helped member states and partners," said Aurescu.

The 3rd Atlantic-Black Sea Security Forum - Democratic Security and Resilience in the Era of Great Power Competition is an event organized by the Aspen Romania Institute in partnership with the Bucharest office of the German Marshall Fund of the US. Attending the event were also NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana and European Commission Vice President for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, Maros Sefcovic.