*** A new policy workshop competition has been launched, co-sponsored by NATO, the US Mission to Germany and the Boell Foundation: "Your Ideas, Your NATO". This is an opportunity for citizens 35 years and younger from all NATO Member and Partner Countries to share their policy ideas on the important issues that will be debated at the NATO Summit in Chicago. They could win 500 EUR and a trip to Berlin (round-trip airfare and 4 nights' accommodation) to present their ideas at our conference on May 21 and receive feedback from NATO. Check out the full announcement for more information: http://www.atlantic-community.org/index/articles/view/Your_Ideas%2C_Your_NATO The deadline for submissions in the first category is February 23. *** Download the program (pdf) *** *** Letter from the President Dear ATA Members and Friends, The year 2011 will be a crucial year for the Atlantic Treaty Association as well as NATO. The implementation process of the new Strategic Concept which was adopted last fall in Lisbon will be a major step in making NATO ready for future threats and challenges. The work is not done yet and it is in all of our interest to support this process as much as we can. In regards to the ATA I am looking forward to a wide range of activities from our national chapters. After the very successful year of 2010 I hope that we can continue our work with the same effort this year. The ATA has an important contribution to make concerning the understanding of the alliance and its objectives. I therefore encourage each and every member of the different national chapters to participate and help to improve the public understanding of NATO. In Lisbon we have experienced a historic stage of cohesion within the alliance and it is important to make NATO's importance clear to people in all member states and beyond. I personally look forward to several visits and occasions to meet friends from all over the Atlantic community. In March I will be visiting the Greek Association for Atlantic and European Cooperation in Athens and participate in the GLOBSEC Conference in Bratislava. It would be a pleasure to meet many of you there. In May it will be an honor to welcome delegations from all ATA member states as well as associate and observing member states to the meeting of the Council in Brussels. Finally, I am in excited anticipation for the meeting of the General Assembly this fall in Tirana, Albania. It will be a fantastic possibility to discuss the current challenges and developments as well as to gather around friends from different national chapters. I am looking forward to productive discussions and a great experience in Tirana. I hope that you will enjoy this first newsletter of the New Year and wish all of you a pleasant spring. It would be a pleasure to see many of you during this year's activities of ATA and its member associations. All the best, Dr: Karl A. Lamers, MdB *** GLOBSEC 2011 The recent GLOBSEC 2011 Bratislava Global Security Forum, which took place in early March, reaffirmed its position as one of the leading foreign policy and security events in Europe. The reactions and feedback from discussants, guests and media clearly show that this year's GLOBSEC has successfully assumed a position among the leading conferences of its kind in the transatlantic region. The 6th annual GLOBSEC Forum has been the biggest in its history and took place simultaneously with the Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Visegrad Group and the Eastern Partnership countries in Bratislava. During the three days, 70 discussants, including 20 present and former ministers and deputy ministers of foreign affairs and defence, participated in 7 discussion sessions, 6 informal Night Owl Sessions and several dinner break-out sessions in Bratislava's restaurants, all of which initiated fruitful debates on key foreign policy, economic and security issues. More than 700 registered guests from more than 40 countries were able to take part in these sessions. Moreover, the transfer of GLOBSEC's venue to the new premises of the Kempinski Hotel River Park Bratislava contributed to a significant rise of the event's political importance. More than 40 multilateral and bilateral political and expert meetings facilitated by the organisers provided the GLOBSEC with a unique added value in the form of strong corridor diplomacy and reaffirmed the event's high political significance. Approximately 70 journalists from all over Europe contributed to extensive media coverage of the Forum and we facilitated dozens of interviews, discussions and press conferences. This year, the Forum was again followed live on the Internet by several thousands of people, whereas we used available social networks to provide an flow of updated information before and during the event. A number of interesting ideas, opinions and views on various topics were discussed at GLOBSEC 2011, ranging from the future of Belarus and Ukraine, importance of the Visegrad region in terms of the EU and its position in transatlantic relations, post-crisis Eurozone, cyber and energy security, future of the Alliance after the Lisbon Summit, Russia-US relations all the way to the issue of climate change as a security threat. However, the ambition of the GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum is not only to create space for interesting and thought-provoking discussions. We are making an effort to spread the best and most memorable ideas and opinions from the Forum and in this way we want, in the long term, to contribute to the process of shaping the transatlantic strategic debate from the Central European perspective. Therefore we recommend you a summary from the event containing dynamic discussions on key current issues of international relations in a comprehensive form. Please, find the summary attached or at the website: http://www.ata-sac.org/globsec2011/agenda/summaries-and-transcripts/. We believe that it will provide you with inspiration and information relevant to your work. We will be glad if you spread the messages from GLOBSEC during your speeches, while writing articles, blogs or in communication via Facebook or Twitter. In addition to summaries, you can also find complete video recordings on the website www.globsec.org and on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/SACSlovakia#p/c/D04F1ABCC5F4C4FB, which allow you to experience all main discussions from this year's GLOBSEC. A picture gallery, series of GLOBSEC Policy Briefs and media monitoring are also accessible at the website. We believe that the above-mentioned materials will prove to be useful and thought-provoking. *** Greetings from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as president of the European Council "Building friendship over the ruins of war and hatred, bringing Communism to its knees, reunifying Europe, creating a new global currency, building the common and unified economic region of 500 million people and 27 nations was clearly more difficult than the work that awaits us now." Where are the snows of yesterday! When I, as a representative of my country, used to participate in the summits of the prime ministers of the European Union before 2002, we were all filled with enthusiasm, optimism, historical commitment towards the reunification of Europe, pride over the historical achievement of introducing the euro, the preemption of another victorious era of the ancient civilization of Europe. When the doors of rooms hosting European summits opened to me once again in the summer of 2010, I was received by faces marked by worry, foreheads wrinkled with concern, speeches about the insecure future, statesmen and stateswomen urging help and retreating into crisis talks. And all this was accompanied by the background music of the creaking and cracking of the joints of the euro. An optimistic era came to end, a mission was completed, the fuel tanks of the great devotion are depleted, the carrier rockets had to come to a crash landing. It would not be reasonable to complain about the unjust and unlucky turn of fate. After all, this is how the life cycle of great civilizations, ancient cultures and world champion economic systems is. Soaring missions are followed by critical ebbs, the search for the road full of doubt, and then the cathartic, supporting and self-confident years of finding the new mission. This was how Providence defined the mission of constructing peace over the ruins of the second World War in Europe; and this was how the case of reunifying the European continent became our mission after the collapse of Communism, including the introduction of the euro, the most important steel hinge keeping the unified Europe together, which also promised to be the strongest. The era of almost two decades of a triumphant march was replaced by the tectonic movements of globalization that led to the redistribution of global markets. The task that the European Union is facing is not complicated; it is just difficult. We should manage the crises of national economies that seem to escalate; we should apply a successful crisis management exercise to stabilize the euro and turn it into the most reliable currency in the world; and we should renew the economic system so that it is competitive with its new rivals who are fuelled by ambition and driven by a hunger for success. The six-month work of the Belgian presidency was similar to the successful start of a running race: now the Hungarians must fight for an advantage in the laps, while Poland will have to be strong on the home stretch. Fitting back into the special linguistic universe of eurocrats this means that while the crisis management taskforce and the ’Europe 2020’ strategy was accepted under the Belgian presidency, the modification of the treaty should be done and the permanent crisis management mechanism should be established under the Hungarian presidency. During the same period, the operation of the European Economic Semester must be launched and the doors to full employment and the respect of work and production must be opened; and then under the Polish Presidency, with a dashing gallop, the tools must be created of the financial framework for the next seven years that make these objectives achievable. That’s all. It is difficult, but not at all impossible. Building friendship over the ruins of war and hatred, bringing Communism to its knees, reunifying Europe, creating a new global currency, building the common and unified economic region of 500 million people and 27 nations was clearly more difficult than the work that awaits us now. Why shouldn’t we then be optimistic? The Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2011 will do everything to make the Europe 2020 strategy successful, declares Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in an exclusive interview for the Council website. *** Chiefs of Defence from NATO’s Countries meet in Slovakia for annual Conference Mr. Lamers ATA letter Under the same roof 2^nd Conference “Creating a sphere of security in wider Central Europe: Sharing the V4 know-how in cooperation on security with the neighbouring regions” Budapest, 8-9 April 2010 Final Draft - V4 ATA Presidents Declaration 8 April, 2010, Budapest