With the Danish chairmanship drawing to a close it is possible to look back and reflect upon the year.

The outgoing chairman of the Military Coordination Committee, Rear Admiral Frank Trojahn (seen right), notes that NORDEFCO has taken important steps forward: “We have pushed NORDEFCO in a direction where we not only focus on peace time, but also crisis and conflict situations. We have also strengthened relations with the United States and expanded cooperation with the Baltic States.”

2020 was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the sweeping changes that came with it. Despite these difficulties NORDEFCO has had a very productive year. “I have had a busy year, but my staff has had an even busier year. We were lucky to just manage to conduct some of the travel to the Baltic States right before the lockdown. From then on we mostly had to conduct meetings via video link. That turned out to work reasonably well and we were able to complete almost all the goals that we set at the beginning of the year,” Rear Admiral Frank Trojahn explains. The Head of the Danish NORDEFCO Secretariat is Special Adviser Thomas Hauge Berg (seen left).

Denmark has handed over the chairmanship of NORDEFCO to Finland. In 2021 Finland will chair both the political and the military level of the cooperation. Although Finland will only officially take on the role as chairman from next year, as is tradition a “Kick-off” meeting was held to facilitate the handover. However, due to the travel restrictions imposed to stop the spread of COVID-19 the Kick-off meeting was held virtually for the first time ever.

Photo: Eskil Mortensen.