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NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana has welcomed Romania's decision to set up the Euro-Atlantic Resilience Centre (E-ARC), voicing his conviction that it would "make a significant contribution" to deepening the debate and operationalising resilience at the societal level.
"I am welcoming Romania's decision to set up this centre. It is a useful and necessary decision. I am also glad that this international centre is not offered exclusively to the relationship with NATO, but to this indispensable strategic partnership between NATO and the EU. A few months ago, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had his first meeting with the College of Commissioners, at the invitation of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Among the topics I identified and deal with specifically at the NATO level, in the NATO-EU relationship, the subject of resilience comes out first. Therefore, this centre has the vocation, the purpose and the utility, the effectiveness to provide expertise, to generate ideas, to work with the private and non-governmental sectors and to be able to create a system in which resilience at the societal level is strengthened," Geoana told the opening of the E-ARC headquarters in Bucharest on Monday.
He conveyed NATO secretary general's congratulations to Romania, saying the establishment of the centre was "an admirable endeavour" and voiced his belief that it would "make a significant contribution to deepening the debate and operationalising resilience" at the societal level.
"In two weeks' time, on June 14, NATO leaders, the President of Romania, all NATO leaders will return to the issue of resilience and we hope to have the approval of our NATO leaders to go on with an additional commitment to resilience to carry on this debate, because the ongoing pandemic has taught us complex lessons, lessons that this kind of permanent adaptation at the NATO level forces us to internalise and operationalise. This endeavour is not a simple effort of governments at the national or local level. The concept has developed even today: we are talking about an effort of resistance at the societal level, which means that the relationship with the private sector, with the non-governmental sector, with society, with our citizens is as important as the effectiveness at governmental or intergovernmental level," he added.
Geoana also voiced his confidence that the subject of resilience and the contribution of the E-ARC will also benefit Romania's partners.
"We cannot be safe and stable in Europe, North America , the transatlantic or European world if our neighbourhoods are fragile. Therefore, I believe and encourage that perhaps an additional vocation of this centre is to support NATO and EU partners who need support and resilience and the fight against fragility," he said.
Geoana went on to say that resilience "is part of NATO's DNA," mentioning that 72 years ago NATO's founders defined this concept for the first time in Article 3 of the Washington Treaty,.
"As an institution, as a concept, it is at the heart of what we represent as a community of shared values and interests in Europe, in a transatlantic partnership with our strategic partners in the US and Canada. In those moments of the Cold War, resilience had a certain meaning and a certain scope, but NATO still has in its genetic code another permanent gene, that of adaptation, of adaptability, of evolution. And today, in Bucharest, through the exceptional effort of the Romanian state officials, we are once again witnessing an endeavour of continual adaptation," said Geoana.
