Central European Defence Cooperation SOF Conference opens in Split

  The participants include the representatives of Special Operations Forces of Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia, and a representative of the NATO Special Operations Headquarters, while Poland is attending in the observer status.

The Conference, organised by the Croatian Armed Forces’ Special Operations Battalion, was opened by a keynote address by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Operations, Brigadier General Mate Pađen, who emphasised that the purpose of the co-operation within the C.E.D.C. framework was to foster the interoperability, enable sharing of experience and identification and responding to future common threats.

The Conference has been co-organised with the Operations and Training Directorate of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces, and is taking place within the international defence co-operation -the EU “Pooling and Sharing” Initiative and the Central European Defence Co-operation (C.E.D.C.) respectively.
C.E.D.C. brings together Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the observer status. The joint goal is enhancing the defence co-operation of the member countries, in compliance with the provisions of  the European Common Security and Defence Policy.
The underlying concept of the C.E.D.C is pooling and sharing of defence capabilities of the Central European countries and co-operation in the framework of limited defence budgets. The member countries have jointly identified the domains to develop and conduct their co-operation in. 

Croatia has declared the intent to join 21 of the 25 domains proposed. It is a co-facilitating nation for the developing of the joint regional pilot training capability (with the Czech Republic),and for the training courses for special forces operations (with Austria) respectively.