New Strategy Center (Romania) in cooperation with think tank World Experience for Georgia is organizing the Advanced Research Workshop “Black Swans on the Eastern Flank” in Bucharest, Romania in spring 2018, project held within the NATO SPS Science for Peace and Security Programme framework. The advanced research workshop in Bucharest will seek to assess the array of challenges on the Eastern Flank and discuss the ways to tackle them. Given its aim to analyze “black swan” scenarios on the Eastern Flank, the project has a distinct interest in providing a tailored set of scenarios in the shape of an integrated document.

In the first stage of the project, the co-directors will create a risk analysis on what has happened in Europe in the past few years. Based on this assessment and with involvement of country experts the “black swans” will be developed on four selected SPS key priorities: Counter-Terrorism, Energy Security, Cyber Defense and Border and Port Security. All the scenarios will be assessed through two main dimensions: likely-hood and impact. The participant countries will discuss the selected scenarios during the seminar in Bucharest.

The event will gather high level officials, NATO and EU experts, civil society and governmental agencies as well as specialists in the topics selected for this project in all the countries in the Balkans and the Black Sea area.