Vienna, Austria (July 6, 2015) - From 28-30 June at the Austrian National Defence Academy in Vienna, Austria, NATO and Partnership for Peace Consortium (PfPC) officials convened the fourth annual NATO Clearing House to review efforts of the Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP).  The Clearing House brought together 58 participants from 23 countries and 42 institutions to coordinate support to existing and future defense education programs.

DEEP, managed by NATO and the PfPC, connects senior educators from NATO nations with their counterparts from partner countries with the objective of building, modernizing and reforming defense institutions.

"While cooperative security depends on tactical and operational capacity, I know and you know that it also depends on intellectual interoperability -- what we learn and how we learn it -- and this is what DEEP builds," said Eva Shinagel, the Deputy Director of Defense Policy and Plans Division, and Chief of Cooperative Security Policy of the United States Mission to NATO‎.

The clearing house came just one day following a graduating class of new officers from the Moldovan Military Academy (MMA). During the graduation on 27 June, NATO declared the achievement of capacity for the DEEP program with the MMA, a first of its kind event, as the MMA’s program is the first degree-granting course for new officers developed under the DEEP program.

DEEP programs are also underway in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.  Croatia is the newest DEEP program recipient and on 7 July, the Croatian Chief of Defense Drago Lovrić plans to kick of another multinational defense education review event, this time focusing on modern learning and teaching methods being implemented across various DEEP programs.