Ministry of Interior, Finland
“Before participating in the programme I wanted to really see what kind of common ideas would there be with all the country representatives and what themes we could take forward after this. I found it particularly interesting to see that there is a great interest in developing this network and cooperation within the Baltic Sea region, and I was happy to see the Commission looking into it as well, as it is unique within the European Union,” – says Eero about his urge to participate at the Baltic Leadership Programme.
According to him, an important aspect of the programme was that it provided tools for refocusing civil protection cooperation on certain themes that are particularly of common interest to the Baltic Sea region countries. This cooperation is not Brussels based, it is rather cooperation between countries.
Eero believes that the Baltic Leadership Programme will bring a change to civil protection work in the participating countries as the word about it gets around pretty easily in the region, and the networks are established. He himself, for example, did not know potential cooperation partners from Poland before, but now he has very good contacts to Poland.