REPORT ON ERCO MEETING   9-13 APRIL 2004

SİDE-ANTALYA-TURKEY

The 2nd ERCO Meeting was held in Side-Antalya, Turkey as it was planned between the dates of 9-13 April 2004 after the 1st regional meeting took place in the same place in 2003. It was the second meeting of the region covering Balkan, Black Sea and Caucasus CISM  member and non-member CISM countries. To this second meeting of the region, 10 CISM and non-member CISM countries participated. These countries were Albania,Azerbaijan,Georgia, Macedonia, Uzbekistan, Romania ,Serbia and Montenegro and Turkey. Poland and Syria were also present as observers.Armeia,Bulgaria, Bosnia  Herzegovina , Moldova and Ukraine were not present but an invitation had been also sent to them.

The number of the participants were quite satisfactory comparing to the first meeting  took place in the same place one  year before. In 2003, there were only 6 participants.Vice President for Europea, European members of CISM Board of Directors, and the president of the planning commission, and the Chief of Eureopean Laison Office were also present at the second meeting of the region.

According to the agenda of the meeting , it was carried out in 4 sessions in two days.

In the first session after roll call, new members were introduced to the participants and the accomplishments and goals of ERCO were introduced. For the first time, ERCO bussiness plan was established and the first draft was approved by the participating nations.

According to the first draft of ERCO Bussiness Plan, it was decided ;

-to establish a sub-strategic regional plan covering a 3-6 years management process. (The plan will be completed and approved during the third ERCO meeting that will take place in Romania in 2005)

-to collect  data from the nations for a better management evaluation system

-to strenghten the regional status of ERCO that will be more functional in the regulations. In this framework, it was proposed to include and add ‘regional offices’ in the CISM Regulations. For this purpose a more detailed study will be made and sent to the European Vice-Precidency to be forwarded to the 1st BOD Meeting in  February 2005. The aim here is to officialize regional coordination offices in the CISM Regulations.

- to provide more cooperation between delegations and National Sports Federations. For this purpose ,establishing the Balkan ,Black Sea and Caucasus Military Sports Federation was accepted in principle.The aim here is to support and promote athletes serving in the military and to coordinate better military and civillian sports events.

- to activate inactive nations and obtain new members to the region and CISM in order to increase the number of the CISM member nations.

-  to identfy “new sports” for CISM Regional sports program. In this framework ,Romanian Delegation is planning to introduce a new sport branch practiced in Romania to the participants during the next year’s ERCO Meeting in Predeal.    

-  to promote women participation on the regional level mainly in Judo , shooting ,Football and in others.

- and finally in order to develop a new communication policy towards sport on a regional level , a website covering the region is under construction. This website will enable us to promote the visibility of CISM Sports on a regional level and will also be used as a sort of digi-library as proposed by the Romanian Delegation.

Planning and determining the criteria for technical assisstance and organization of study day/ workshops during the regional championsips were also emphasized in this regional bussiness plan.

To take the attention of the participants to enhancing physical training in the Armed Forces in the region was also facused in the plan in order to develop the armed Forces athletes in the region.For this purpose ,chief of ERCO participated in the semposium in Tunisia and will give a speech to implement the results of the semposium on a regional level in next year’s ERCO meeting .

As you know, the global CISM Strategic plan will be completed till the General Assembly in 2005 and the regional issues will be added to the regional bussiness plan and be also discussed and approved during the next year’s ERCO meeting in Romania.

This part of the regional bussiness plan was a bit long because we really belive in “think globally and  act regionally”.

Later on in the first session of the meeting THE Vice-President made his review on the CİSM activities including the continental meeting in Denmark and the third MWG and the eligibility of the athletes.

In the second session of the meeting , European Liaison Officer explained the importance of the coordination between the European LO and ERCO and also briefed on the decision files that would be in the agenda of the 2004 General Assembly.This part was quite beneficial for the participants because they were able to prepare themselves for the files at least 1,5 months before.

Later on, questionnaire prepared by the CISM Strategic Planning Commission was evaluated by the President of the commission.This part was also interesting and fruitful for the participants to get prepared for the CISM strategic plan for which we think they were possibly not going to find enough time to evaluate during the General Assembly in Conakry. In short , the participanted nations of the 2 nd ERCO meeting were well prepared for the same issues of strategic and bussiness plan in the General Assembly.

Now, strategic planning commision says in the summary and basic conclusions section of the draft CISM strategic plan that “ CISM is working in highly diverse regions in economic and political terms.The heterogeneity of the continents, the powers of globalisation and the different capacities in the regions require a differentiated approach for CISM. Therefore,  CISM should invest in the creation and the development of decenteralized structures” .

What we should understand from “decenteralized structures” is the regional cordination offices like ERCO.Therefore we may say that CISM’s future is in “decenteralized structures”  similar to ERCO.

In the 3 rd session of the meeting, Director of ERCO gave his speech on TAF sports activities in CISM and hinted that the 5th edition of the World Military Games are likely to be organized by the Turkish Armed Forces in Turkey.

In the 4 th session, the regional calendars for 2004 and 2005 were updated .The meeting was also decided to be held every year in september before the Continental meeting .Therefore the next meeting of the region will be held in Romania by  the Romanian Delegation.

During the free discussion session, possible discussion points of about 10 which were determined previously were roughly discussed and decided that the delegations would send their written inputs on those points to the ERCO till the 1 st of May 2004 before the General Assembly in May 2004.

CONCLUSIONS:

The 2 nd meeting of the Balkan, Black Sea and Caucasus region CISM member and non-member nations was a success and benefıcial in terms of CISM’s future  as being decenteralized structure.  

The participation of CISM members and non-CISM members,inactive CISM  

Members and off continent CISM members like Syria showed us one more time that the step made in 2002 in Lithuania for the establisment of ERCO was right and as the Vice President says in his annual report he made during the last Genaral Assembly in Conakry “CISM in Europea has expanded in combination with some regional initiatives.Turkey hosted for the second time a regional coordination meeting for some nations from  the Balkan, the Black Sea area and the Caucasus. The main idea was to gather the nations (CISM members or not yet) to initiate some collaboration between them in those three sub regions where there are still a lot of possibilities to develop some initiatives for the benefit of those nations and for CISM.

I think that CISM is doing well in the European continent despite the changing environment and the scrimping budgets”.