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The focus of this year’s 18th edition of the International Crisis Management Days Conference was placed on global issues of defence and security, which also served as the leitmotif of the keynote lectures delivered by invited speakers. These included Croatia’s renowned security expert Prof. Dr. Vlatko Cvrtila, who addressed the topic “How to ‘Read’ Contemporary Security? Security Cultures and Practices in the 21st Century”, and Stipe Masnić from the European Commission, who spoke on “A New Era for European Defence and Security.”

The representative of the European Commission gave an insightful lecture explaining the concept behind the White Paper for European Defence. He emphasized that in order to live in peace, Europe needs significantly greater investment in defence to ensure the security of all EU citizens—both today and in the future.

This is the key message of the White Paper, which provides an action plan aimed at ensuring a more capable and fully prepared European defence system by 2030.

“We are witnessing the EU shifting its focus toward ensuring existential security, especially in light of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. However, security also includes other important elements—resilience, strengthening society, tackling vulnerabilities, building social cohesion, addressing demographic challenges, and more.
We are currently not paying enough attention to many other challenges that are equally important for the future development of our societies. The war in Europe—Russia’s aggression on Ukraine—has in many ways overshadowed these other narratives. All other security risks have fallen into the background.
Right now, we are highly focused on defence, armament, and on security narratives centred around the enemy and protecting against that enemy. But these other risks have not disappeared—they are still present and active, and we must not ignore them,” said Prof. Cvrtila during his lecture.

The keynote lectures by our invited experts sparked great interest among the conference participants, who followed the presentations with a series of thoughtful and engaging questions.

Photo: David Jolić