Executive Academic Board (EAB)

The Executive Academic Board (EAB) is the College’s body responsible for ensuring the quality and coherence of the ESDC training and education activities. The Board is composed of senior representatives from those civilian and military institutes and other actors identified by the EU Member States to support the conduct of ESDC training and education activities (representatives of the ESDC network members) and of the Director of EUISS or the Director’s representative. The senior representatives of the associate network partners are also invited to attend the meetings of the Board as active observers. Academic experts and senior officials from Union and national institutions may be invited to attend the meetings of the Board as observers. When appropriate and on a case-by-case basis, academic experts and senior officials who are representatives of institutes that are not members of the network may be invited to participate in the meetings of the Board. The tasks of the Board shall be to:
  • Provide academic advice and recommendations to the Steering Committee;
  • Implement, through the network, the agreed annual academic programme;
  • Oversee the e-Learning system;
  • Develop curricula for all ESDC training and education activities;
  • Ensure general coordination of ESDC training and education activities among all institutes;
  • Review standards of the training and education activities undertaken in the previous academic year;
  • Submit proposals to the Steering Committee for training and education activities in the next academic year;
  • Ensure a systematic evaluation of all ESDC training and education activities and approve the course evaluation reports;
  • Contribute to the draft general annual report on ESDC activities;
  • Support the implementation of the European Initiative for the Exchange of Young Officers (Emilyo/Military Erasmus), inspired by the Erasmus Programme.
The EAB meets four times per academic year:
  • September‘s meeting is dedicated to the accomplishment of three discreet tasks, namely,  the drafting of the General Annual Report of the ESDC Activities (GAREA), the elaboration of the training calendar for the upcoming year, and finally the identification and justification of the respective budget.
  • November‘s meeting is organised back-to-back with ESDC’s  “CSDP Annual Training and Education Conference”. It primarily focuses  on the analysis of the information/needs collected during the above conference. The analysis outcomes, along with a collection of lessons learnt from the standing missions and operations, are co-evaluated and taken under consideration for either the adaptation of the standing courses (curricula), or the creation of new ones. A critical element taken under consideration is the availability of the College’s training partners in covering the respective needs;
  • February‘s meeting, runs over two working days as is mainly dedicated to the curricula development and validation (all ESDC curricula are reviewed/revised biannually). It should be noted  that the specific meeting is organised back-to-back with the ESDC Alumni Seminar, a common endevor, between ESDC and EUISS ;
  • The May/June meeting closes the EAB circle during the academic year and looks to the future academic year, being the starting point for the planning of the next year’s academic calendar; It should be noted that the present EAB meeting is always held concurrently with the final module of ESDC’s flagship course, namely the ‘High level course’ where the Graduation Certificates are presented to the participants.
The Board could meet in different project-focused configurations. Each configuration reports its activities back to the overall Board at least once every year, after which its mandate may be extended. At the moment, the following project-focused Board configurations work under the EAB: SSR (Security Sector Reform) EAB, Implementation Group (Emilyo/Military Erasmus), EAB.Cyber, Working Group on CSDP Missions and Operations related Training (WGMOT), European Doctoral School on CSDP (Doc.CSDP) and. SQF-MILOF Ad-hoc Working Group.

EAB configuration

Chair: Dr Mircea Mîndrescu He is a retired Brigadier General (RO Army) whose professional expertise spans over the most important domains of defence activities, namely operational units and formations, military educational institutions, Ministry of Defence’s main bodies, defence planning and politico – military diplomacy. Dr Mîndrescu is a former director of the Romanian National Defence College (Bucharest) and also former Commander of NATO Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre (Lisbon). Currently, he is associated with the Romanian National College for Home Affairs and with the Romanian leading thing-thank New Strategy Center.
Configuration support team:
George Kapogiannis George Kapogiannis is a Greek military officer with many years of experience in Training, Education, Human Resources, Project Management, Leadership and Operational Planning, seconded to ESDC by the Greek Army since November 2021. He is handling an extensive ESDC courses portfolio in the fields of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), by implementing project plans, managing project stakeholders, project team, project risk, schedule and related budget. He is in lead of the contribution to EU-NATO cooperation in the fields of Education / Training and also for the implementation of the Sectoral Qualification Framework for the military profession, being also the moderator of the respective Executive Group (SQF-MILEG). He has been appointed as EU and NATO Advance Operational Planning and Concepts Section Head at the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (2019-2021). During his assignment to NATO / SHAPE (2014-2017), he assumed the role of the Executive / Coordination Officer of J1 Division (Human Resources), managing Manpower Policy and Personnel projects. His extensive military career includes several assignments to armor units and command posts up to Reconnaissance Battalion Commander. He holds a Master of Science degree from the National University of Athens, in Applied Information and Telecommunication Systems Technologies. He has recently completed his Master of Arts degree from the University of Plymouth (UK) in the fields of Applied Strategy and International Security.