Every year, YATA Germany organises the NATO’s Future Seminar to assemble 30 young professionals and students under the age of 35 from all NATO and Partnership for Peace Programme member states to discuss and formulate policy-recommendations for NATO policy. The aim of the seminar is to promote dialogue and connections between NATO-experts and aspiring younger generation leaders. Beforehand, the participants chose from three NATO policy topics and wrote an essay on their topic.
This year’s topics were:
I. The Ability to Deter: How NATO Responds to Russian Belligerence in Eastern Europe
II. NATO’s New Strategic Concept: What Strategies to Deal with Strategic Competition?
III. New Era of European Defence Cooperation: What EU-NATO Cooperation?
To each session, senior political and military experts as well as NATO’s Future Alumni were invited to discuss ideas and recommendations developed by the seminar’s participants.
As a final highlight, the seminar participants presented their results. They formulated recommendations, which were sent to a high-level NATO official, who responded directly to the recommendations and provided an assessment and feedback from a NATO perspective.
Examples of recommendations:
- Accelerate Allied arms industries through long term coordinated procurement contracts
- Establish a new Alliance Maritime Strategy to reflect a new strategic environment
- With the accession of Sweden and Finland into the Alliance, NATO should leverage the regional expertise and collection capabilities of Baltic and Nordic partners to further integrate its intelligence enterprise through the establishment of a regional intelligence fusion center
The YATA Germany Executive Board is convinced that the younger generations have to make their voices heard and will therefore continue to offer a platform to make this possible.
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