site.bta NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence in Sofia Receives Official Accreditation

NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence in Sofia Receives Official Accreditation

Sofia, April 1 (BTA) - The NATO Crisis Management and Disaster
Response Centre of Excellence (CMDR COE) in Sofia received
official accreditation from the North Atlantic Council and was
activated as a NATO military agency with international status
pursuant to Article 14 of the Paris Protocol, the Bulgarian
Defence Ministry reported on Wednesday.

The accreditation was granted after CMDR COE met the
requirements of the NATO Military Committee and underwent an
approval process involving the NATO member countries which ended
 at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. The Bulgarian-based international
organization will assist NATO's transformation and capacity
building in the field of crisis management and disaster
response.

Over the last two years, CMDR COE and the Bulgarian Defence
Ministry have been working in close cooperation with NATO's
Allied Command Transformation, NATO Headquarters and experts on
the building of the centre. Eventually, the centre received an
official accreditation assessment from the Supreme Allied
Commander Transformation.

CMDR COE is an international organization established under a
memorandum of understanding between the defence ministries of
Bulgaria, Greece and Poland, which was signed in Norfolk
(Virginia, US) on August 28, 2013. The centre was unveiled on
September 17, 2014 by Bulgarian President and Supreme
Commander-in-Chief Rosen Plevneliev.

The Sofia centre is part of a network of centres for research,
building and development of NATO capabilities. It is not
designed to carry out disaster response operations, but rather
to provide expertise.