April 4, 2018

NATO-EU Roundtable 2018

On April 4 Sven Sakkov, Director of ICDS, moderated a panel “NATO-EU Cooperation in Countering Hybrid Threats — From Past Origins to Future Prospects” at the sixth “NATO-EU Roundtable” organised by the Estonian Atlantic Treaty Organisation in cooperation with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and NATO Headquarters.

The conference focused on the NATO-EU political and military cooperation, particularly in the domain of countering hybrid threats, cyber defence and strategic communication.

Piret Pernik, Research Fellow, ICDS, spoke at a panel on NATO-EU cyber defence cooperation. She focused on political realities and the possible solutions of NATO and the EU in the field of cyber defence. She noted that the practical obstacle is the difference in the nature between NATO and the EU, the level of resilience, and lack of trust from the part of the member states to ask assistance from the EU, among other constraints. Pernik noted that the possible solutions could be information sharing, coordinated response, joint cyber defence exercises, the need for the EU to adopt a “cyber defence pledge”.

Erkki Bahovski, Editor-in-Chief of Diplomaatia, ICDS, spoke at the panel “NATO-EU Cooperation in Strategic Communication and Defence Against Information Operations.” Bahovski stated that the EU must define what journalism is today. He explained that finding such definition is difficult as everyone can be a journalist in nowadays information era. Bahovski noted that when in the past traditional journalism had certain rules that had to be followed, then today the emergence of social media has caused journalism to operate in a different and unexpected manner. He also criticised the EU StratCom, stating that not only is it unable to define what journalism is, but also indecisive about the unit responsible for fighting disinformation. He concluded that the EU is reluctant to give additional resources into fighting disinformation.

Summary of the conference: http://www.eata.ee/conclusion-of-the-panel-discussions-nato-eu-roundtable-2018/

Photo gallery: http://www.eata.ee/galerii/