EUCOM Legal Conference
Senior legal experts from over 30 European nations are meeting at the EUCOM International Legal Conference beginning Sep. 22, 2009, in Garmisch, Germany. Co-sponsored by the George C. Marshall Center, this week-long event will encourage discussion on such emerging legal questions as: what is the military role for ensuring energy security in Europe? What are the legal and military challenges facing the future of the Arctic/High North in the decades to come? A multinational panel will also discuss trends in Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).
Admiral Jim Stavridis and the DoD's Principal Deputy General Counsel, Mr. Robert Taylor, will make keynote presentations on the critical roles that military and civilian attorneys play in military planning and operations. Dutch Brigadier General Jos van Duurling, Danish Commodore Per Christensen, and other senior European legal experts will also present on avariety of legal issues that impact EUCOM's partner nations, including European involvement in ISAF and combined international efforts at combating piracy.
Were you aware of the multinational involvement in these military operations far outside of the traditional geographic borders of Europe? These military and legal experts will discuss the reality of taking European military forces to international operations.
Would you like to know more? Please send us your questions and we'll present them to the experts for their comments and thoughts.
Kirk H. Samson
Attorney Advisor, YA-03
EUCOM Judge Advocate
Comments: 3
This is quite comprehensive and i have really learnt a lot from it. ,
Wednesday morning’s Status of Forces Agreement panel chaired by Brigadier General van Duurling from the Netherland’s Ministry of Defense was a lively discussion. One participant asked whether it was time to re-write the NATO SOFA, an idea that elicited some frank thoughts from the panel experts on issues such as the difficulty of attempting to find consensus among 28 NATO members on a key basic document. Break-out sessions on the U.S. and Israeli military ethics systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and NATO Centers of Excellence were conference highlights.
The EUCOM Legal conference has been very successful and useful for the participants from Republic of Armenia. I would like to mention the importance of the contact as well as the discussions between the colleagues. We gained new relations with the representatives of the Ministry of Defence of different countries and their official bodies. We mainly liked the discussions about the articles on SOFA and the last lecture of professor Michael Schmitt from the European Centre for Security Studies in Garmish. We offer to present the articles of SOFA in more details, and that the seminars of the second part of the days had more legal motivations.