IB Consultancy is proud to welcome to the 2nd edition of NCT CBRNe Europe

The Non-Conventional Threat: CBRNe Europe 2014 will take place from September 2-3 in Leipzig, Germany, providing a regional forum for Eastern European Armed Forces, Government Agencies and Civil First Responders discussing topical challenges of CBRNe.

The NCT CBRNe events are established and leading international CBRN summits in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. After successful events in the Netherlands, Israel, Thailand and Malaysia, we are now hosting the event in ‘the heart of Europe’, focusing on a region, where CBRNe related challenges and threats are starting to be on the center stage of capability building activities of Armed Forces from Madrid to Riga.

Ever since the First World War, the European continent has had to deal with CBRNe challenges. While the imminent threat of chemical and nuclear warfare on the continent is not existing anymore since the end of the Cold War, the Chernobyl incident and an ever present threat theatre for over 50 years have been engraved on the memories of European citizens. And while military disputes in Europe remained dystopian for a long time, the threat environment changed immensely since the last European war in Kosovo.

At first, with the process of globalisation comes the internationalisation of regional conflicts. Recent examples are uprisings in North Africa, the conflict in Syria, as well as the ongoing instability in Ukraine, which are increasingly affecting European security. And there are actors involved that allegedly possess chemical, biological and nuclear warfare agents. The civil war in Syria affected the security of neighboring Turkey, a NATO member and EU candidate, calling for CBRN preparedness of Turkish first responders and NATO allies such as Germany and The Netherlands (sending patriot missile systems to the Turkish-Syrian border). Without talking about potential conflict scenarios including an international nuclear power such as Russia, one should realise that CBRN threats play an emerging role within conflicts on the Eastern and Southern European border.

In the meantime, CBRN threat scenarios cannot only be related to state actors, but must include potential attacks from terrorist networks using CBRN agents. The terrorist attacks in London, Madrid and Oslo have shown that the threat of these incidents is ever present, while volunteers from all over Europe are joining Jihadi groups in Syria. The numerous terrorist groups in the Middle East and North Africa have all threatened to use CBRNe agents.

With regard to the EHEC outbreak in most parts of Europe in 2011, as well as the Fukushima Daiichi incident in the same year, also civil first responders got more aware of ever present threats of CBRN mass casualty incidents. This concern even resulted in the halt of nuclear power programs in Germany, a country which is traditionally sensitive when it comes to nuclear threats. With regard to further nuclear incidents in various countries in Western and Eastern Europe, it is clear that with nuclear power comes enhanced nuclear safety and preparedness of civil first responders.

CBRN continues to be an imminent challenge to Armed Forces and Civil First Responders in Europe, resulting in large scale research programs of national and EU institutions, as well as the transformation of CBRN Special Forces. The conference will include high-level speakers and governmental delegations from countries such as Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Ukraine, connecting all relevant CBRNe stakeholders involved in these activities from all over Europe.

Our conference topics will include: CBRN Defence and Security in Europe, CBRN Reconnaissance and C4I, Crisis and Hazard Management Approaches, Medical Countermeasures, CBRN Protection, Detection and Decontamination, as well as state-of- the-art CBRN Vehicles and Robotics.

NCT CBRNe Europe 2014 highlights:

• 2 day conference with high-level speakers from the region, stream sessions, interactive workshops and a large exhibition
• Attendees, delegations and speakers from over 40 countries including Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Croatia, and many more
• Networking Cocktail Reception