A strong Center

Tristan Simonart, European Commission Director General for International cooperation and development, EU CBRN CoE, Gulf and Central Asia, talks to Gwyn Winfield about the wider Center of Excellence family

GW: Could I ask you to give a top down description of what the European Union (EU) Centres of Excellence (CoE) are doing, have done and will do in the next few years? TS: The CBRN CoE network is a very strong, robust, resilient network developed over 10 years that will open doors to other synergistic programmes in the coming years.

When the CBRN CoE was launched 10 years ago, it needed to convince countries to join and establish regional secretariats. Today there are 62 partner countries besides the 28/27 EU member states. They are split into different regions, three in Africa. one for the western part of the Middle East, one for the Gulf region, one in Central Asia, one in Southeast Asia, and yet another for the very important area that encompasses Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

National “customers” or authorities benefit from regional funding for projects, which might be for training, supplies, equipment or field exercises. They are also provided with confidential methodology to assess their CBRN gaps and needs, and to build and develop national CBRN action

plans. These are shared for free with partners and they either use them alone or they can activate our EU technical support. In the latter case, we would organise missions to these countries to look at their gaps and risks, or build comprehensive all hazard systems or dual-use export control regimes and developments.

Covid has made things very difficult indeed in many places, but the networks have been activated in all regional centres. A series of webinars/exchanges on lessons learnt on Covid, have been organised, and additional funding was provided for Covid supplies, equipment and special online training. This has kept up the momentum by maintaining active networks and contacts with and between partner countries.

On the structure, the CBRN CoE programme relies on an entry point appointed by each government, the national focal point, which is in charge of coordinating an interagency/interministerial approach to do the work for that country. It’s a bottom up programme, but also trying to achieve intra/intercountry silos to enable the participating countries to have a better view on any situation. We focused on some flagship actions, including a €10m project in Africa to build a fleet of five mobile labs that are fully equipped and fully integrated in the regional architecture. That was signed off last summer with Preasens Care and the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, helping it become the fully-fledged training and research and reach-back centre for Africa on the epidemic intelligence, preparedness, response and recovery.

The network is quite robust and resilient. Each of the host countries in the eight regions has an acting regional director, who is appointed by the host country’s government. They are supported by a full time UN regional coordinator (UNICRI) and full time internationalonsite assistance experts who will work in these regions to support the programme technically or scientifically on a permanent basis. The regions are quite autonomous and proactive in taking ownership and promoting new programmes. They work at different speeds, so it's difficult to compare the Middle East with North Africa, Sahel and Central Asia, for example. But each region has its own dynamic, and contact is maintained two to three times a year through regional round tables between partner countries, the European Commission, the UN, partners and experts involved in the programme.

GW: Have you seen the CoEs change and evolve since they first started out? Initially the focus was on each country having a national action plan and developing interoperability. Can you claim mission success on that bit and move on to something else, or is it never ending and just about getting better? TS: There are things that always need to be consolidated and maintained because the international and local contexts are changing. The programme has contributed to enabling countries to be better be prepared to face new challenges and Covid has been one of them. But in parallel, I've seen the quality of the network and the trust building up. Now, several regions are working on developing regional action plans, which is something we would probably never have heard of 10 years ago! Two years ago the Central Asia country representatives asked for the programme to look at building, starting, designing and developing regional action plans for CBRN, based on their national action plans, need assessments and focused on the UN SCR 1540 resolution requirements. This is now ready at the technical level, it was shared during the last Central Asia regional table in October and is being considered by each country. They will make their own decisions, but there is potential to move forward on a regional action plan for CBRN matters. It might take years, it might take months, and there will be some strong challenges as it could become political, but it is something that has been built and is now on the table. In the near future we will continue in this kind of regional action plan preparation in different regions. The Middle East COE also has a draft to be further elaborated on.

Another direction for the future is enabling the network to organise or connect to crossborder field exercises involving various CBRN stakeholders from different countries. A further dimension that will be continued is strengthening the connection with international bilateral and multilateral programmes, activities, networks and interactions that are in progress. With Covid, we even see more of these opportunities and sometimes duplication. The best way of adding value when approaching outside countries for possible partnering is to invite them to consider establishing a single entry point and a national CBRN team across ministries. This would enable them to reach a point where they can have a valid overview on all interactions, avoid internal duplication and find synergies.

We can dream of global partnership and other systems that map approaches, matrices etc, but it will only work if it's in the hands of each country. We cannot do partnership and efficiency for them, they have to do it though we can contribute.

GW: In terms of global legacies, how do you work with other multinational partners, such as Interpol, the US state department, or the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to ensure that you're neither providing training that runs contrary to theirs or is just duplication? Additional funding was provided for Covid supplies, equipment and special online training ©CBRNe World

TS: The starting point is to share the vision with each country, then it's in their hands. Besides, the EU has strong connections with the US, with DTRA, and the departments of energy, state etc. Currently, due to Covid, face to face meetings are not taking place , the last physical one took place in 2019, but I am sure it will be reconvened soon between the US and EU CBRN partners. This has been very useful in some countries in Central Asia, like Uzbekistan, where we have been able to identify potential overlap or competition between Russia, the US and Europe. The EU is also part of the International Science and Technology Centre, hosted in Kazakhstan, where the US, Canada, the EU as a body, Japan, South Korea and additional regional partners, share activity and projects as well as funding for specific activities. This was initiated after the Cold war and is now an intergovernmental science and technology platform for exchanging information and deciding on co-funding of activities linked to export control, security, science and CBRN in particular. That’s another great example of interaction with other global partners.

There is also regular, systematic interaction with Interpol, Europol, UN agencies and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in many parts of Africa and Central Asia. I would come back to the initial principle of the CBRN CoE, which is to stimulate the thinking. National teams should include all their CBRN stakeholders as representatives; that means their 1540 focal point, their WHO international health regulation focal or contact point or officials who represent the country externally. This delivers not only interministerially, but also a crosscutting national team or network to include everyone interacting with internal and external CBRN stakeholders. This way they can

filter and collect all information from all external bodies.

GW: Has a disaster like Covid, for all the human loss, allowed member countries to see the benefit of a whole of government approach by forcing cooperation between government departments? Also there's an understanding that emerging infectious diseases are like bio-weapons and other CBRN-type incidents and they need to work together far more closely than in the past Have you seen feedback from any CoE nations suggesting that there have been breakthroughs? TS: Definitely. Although I cannot share examples from all 62 countries as I do not have specific overviews of each of them! I've been engaged in the results from Africa, the Gulf and Central Asia, especially this year with Covid. In the UAE, for example, they have been facing this crisis with a lot of proactivity and engagement. They have been able to take quick decisions and apply them across the whole country, taking some direct technical and scientific advice from the CBRN programme and its regional experts. A regional CBRN Hub was inaugurated in November in the Abu Dhabi.

Even in Europe, we were not sufficiently well prepared to face and react quickly to such an event. Our systems have suffered, and we have not reacted as efficiently as we could have. Easier to say than implement! There are some big

The COE can introduce partner countries to international experts and exercises, like this one in Belgium ©CBRNe World lessons learned, but there will be a need for a wider discussion and far away from the daily stress and work.

GW: How do the CoEs ensure they don't ‘fight the last war' so we end up with an excellent emerging infectious disease system but not a very good chem system, for example? How do you try and raise awareness that even though what is happening now will seem as if it’s going to be important forever, other crises will come along? TS: I think they know this. If we just consider what happened in Lebanon in August, it's a clear demonstration that if your chemical safety and security governance is inappropriate it needs some major attention. Equally there’s the question of command and control, you may have well trained people but if the systems are not working well for any reason, then good procedures, protocols and people won’t help if something happens.

International cooperation and multilateralism is the efficient way to share best practice. You can’t close a discussion with a fixed and final solution, nothing is the best technology for everyone. Sometimes the best compromise is the way to save lives. Most important is the interaction and exchange of experience and then, with top up funding, to help bring out the substance on the ground. You need to have awareness of the interactions that are taking place inside a nation or ministry and this is how such a programme can contribute as it's always the country that is responsible. It's about creating a place that contributes to multilateralism and international partnership.