CRDF Global and EXBS Expand Strategic Trade Control & Border Security throughout Balkans
As a trusted partner to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation Office of Export Control Cooperation (ISN/ECC), CRDF Global is proud to support the expansion of the impact of the Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) Program in the Balkans. Operating from the base of its Europe & Eurasia (E&E) regional hub in Kyiv, Ukraine with a secondary office in Warsaw, Poland, CRDF Global provides coordinated logistics services and subject matter expertise under a $1 million award for EXBS programming in partner countries including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia
As a result of implementing complex, mission-critical projects in the region for nearly three decades, the breadth of our experience spans multiple government ministries and agencies, where we have built and maintained deep, senior-level relationships. As an established operator in the region, CRDF Global has developed trusted partnerships with key in-country organizations that support our programs and recently invested in a field support office in Warsaw to provide additional support to our growing programming. In the past two years alone, our E&E team has engaged over 10,000 stakeholders from regional ministries, local organizations, and academia in technical training, consultations, site visits, grant management activities, and international exchanges. Programming in the spring of 2024 has included a strategic trade control training on commercial motor vehicles interdiction in Serbia; combatting proliferation finance workshops in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; Green Border tracking trainings in Croatia and Albania; and providing industry-stakeholder mapping expertise to support maritime security initiatives in Montenegro.
“We are deeply committed to building partner capacity throughout the Balkans, and we are well-positioned to do so, with our strong network of subject matter experts, years of local experience, and deep understanding of the region,” said Mykhailo Verych, Director of CRDF Global’s Europe & Eurasia Hub. “Our collaboration with EXBS to strengthen strategic trade control, customs enforcement and border security in the Balkans is a natural expansion of the EXBS programming we’ve implemented in other areas of the world for years, and we are proud to enhance the capacity of our partner countries and increase the overall security of this region as well.”
