President Iohannis to open international conference 'Strengthening NATO's Eastern Flank'

Romania's President Klaus Iohannis will open next Wednesday an international conference called "Strengthening NATO's Eastern Flank: Challenges and Strategies for Baltic-Black Sea Coherence," to be hosted by the Cotroceni Presidential Palace. According to a Presidential Administration's press statement, officials, experts, analysts and representatives of the defence industry from Romania, the United States of America and the Black Sea region will take part in the event to be hosted by the Romanians Presidential Administration and organised by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) to discuss consistency on NATO's Eastern Flank, with emphasis on challenges to the security of the region and concrete ways of countering them. At the same time, the debate aims to highlight Romania's contribution to and expectations from security on NATO's Eastern Flank, including in the Black Sea region. Also addressing the conference will be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Boyse; CEPA Chairman Peter Doran, and Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe (USAREUR), currently a CEPA expert. The conference will be preceded by a seminar organized by CEPA at the level of security and defence experts dedicated to an in-depth debate on NATO's Eastern Flank, to be held on Tuesday April 16. The Presidential Administration has so far hosted two more events organised by CEPA :"Romania's Security Leadership in South East Europe" (June 2016) and the seminar "Reshaping the Security Environment in Southeastern Europe - A View from Bucharest" (April 2018). The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan, public policy research institute dedicated to the study of Central and Eastern Europe. Founded in 2005, CEPA is the only American think-tank whose focus is solely on European countries and societies. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Peia, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)