After welcoming the delegates from national reserve (officer) associations as well as committee representatives, CIOR President LtCOL. Libezny pointed out that this IBM will serve as a starting point for planning CIOR’s activities to take place during the following two years. As a next step, CIOR Secretary General 1Lt. Hajecek outlined the main objectives for the time of the Czech Presidency as well as milestones to be achieved. He asked all country and committee representatives to work towards these objectives.
Following this introduction, representatives from NFRC, CIOMR and CISOR briefed the IBM participants on their agenda. According to these briefings, one common goal is to increase cooperation and joint planning of events with CIOR. Further, it was proposed to extend the offer of training and education opportunities, ideally recognized by NATO.
In the afternoon, CIOR committees started discussions in separate working groups while the CIOR Council concluded on the output from the 2016 Summer Congress in Madrid, Spain. Further, the activities of the Presidency after the Summer Congress 2017 were reported. After that, the Council discussed the upcoming Winter Meeting 2017 as well as the Summer Congress 2017 and 2018 in order to initiate the planning process.
The first day of IBM was concluded by the PfP&Outreach and MILCOMP Committees reporting on recent activities and events as well as providing an outlook on activities planned for 2016-2018.
The morning session of day 2 was dominated by the presentations of the CLA, Symposium workgroup, DEFSEC and Legal Committee chairmen. The presentations outlined the status of ongoing projects and recent events. Further, the chairmen shared the vision of their committees and workgroups for the next two years as well as made participants aware of envisaged changes and key events/ milestones. The participants got the opportunity to actively take part discussing the laid out roadmap.
The afternoon session gave chairmen of the Seminar, CIMIC and Public Affairs committees the opportunity to present the current work of the committees and provide a perspective on the envisaged future development. Also in this Session, participants actively engaged in discussions around these plans.
Today’s session gave the participants the opportunity to become aware of common areas of action, mutual critical success factors as well as potential synergies. The meeting thus created an important corner stone for the next two years to come.
The day was concluded by a dinner with special guests Major General Jaromir Zuna, Director of the Division of Support of the Czech Army and Hynek Novak, Director of the Cabinet of the Czech Minister of Defence, in order to gain forces for the last day of the IBM on Saturday.
The CIOR In-Between Meeting ended with a final review of the discussed topics and mutual agreement of the actions to be taken by all participants.
The conference hall is empty after two long days of discussion. A big thank you goes to the Czech Presidency for hosting this meeting in Prague as well as to all officers participating!