South-Eastern Europe Brigade (SEEBRIG) - formation established by seven participating nations in order to contribute to the regional security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area
Conducted by SEEBRIGNews

SEEBRIG Personnel Enhancing Readiness through the Crisis Management and Disaster Response (CMDR) Course

From 30 March to 03 April 2026, the Crisis Management and Disaster Response (CMDR) Course was conducted at the SEEBRIG Headquarters in Kumanovo, North Macedonia, organized by a Mobile Training Team (MTT) consisting of three instructors from the CMDR Centre of Excellence (COE) in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The objective of the training was to strengthen the SEEBRIG HQ’ personnel’s capacity for effectively responding to crisis and emergency situations, as well as to enhance international and regional cooperation; the program covered key topics related to crisis management, disaster response coordination, emergency planning, and decision-making in complex and dynamic situations.

The growing dimension, frequency, and complexity of disasters and the increasing number of people affected, demand an increase in the response capability for the civil emergency stakeholders as well as military structures. In disasters of great magnitude, national and international relief capacity may be exceeded, and a quick response of specialized military assets in support of and fully coordinated with the civil emergency systems should be considered beforehand as part of the disaster response operations.

As a key component of the South Eastern Europe Disaster Relief Operations (SEEDRO) concept, SEEBRIG is able to plan and execute – through its Engineer Task Force (ETF) – a large array of activities in support of humanitarian assistance and disaster response operations. Therefore, the CMDR Course constituted a perfect “mission-tailored” training for SEEBRIG personnel.

The complexity of the domain made the five-day course very intense and demanding, but the SEEBRIG personnel performed very well in all tasks, actively engaging in lectures, discussions, and practical exercises. A particularly challenging moment was the two-day Table Top Exercise (TTX), conducted by a team of two experts from the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which demanded from the participants to identify quick solutions to a very complex crisis situation, in a contracted time framework.

The successful completion of this course represents a significant contribution to improving SEEBRIG’s interoperability and readiness, as well as to building shared capacities for addressing contemporary and future complex challenges in a domain of great actuality – crisis management and disaster response.

Upon the completion of the course, the CMDR CoE MTT Leader presented to the 22 participants the graduation certificates, expressing, in the name of the team, the appreciation for the interest and involvement SEEBRIG personnel manifested during the course.

COMSEEBRIG, BG. Bilbil BITRI expressed his appreciation to the CMDR COE team’s professionalism and support in training the HQ personnel and presented to the instructors certificates of appreciation and the SEEBRIG Plaque.

One Team, one Mission!