Welcome to the defence department of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Belgrade.

On this page you will find basic information about us.

Head of the department is the defence attaché. Members are also one Dutch assistant and one local employee. Our main task is to assist and develop bilateral military cooperation.

Main task of the department is to provide support to the reform of the security sector in Serbia as well as in Montenegro, bearing in mind both countries joined the NATO programme PfP. In Serbia this is being carried out through a bilateral assistance programme. With Montenegro we still do not have a bilateral plan, but however, we already do provide significant support to their Ministry of Defence – just to mention the Montenegro Democracy Assistance Project carried out by the Jefferson Institute in Podgorica. Besides the bilateral program, we do support various other projects of the Ministry of Defence of Serbia and the Ministry of Defence of Montenegro.

Out of the wide range of projects we support in Serbia we would like to mention the PRISMA project for resettlement of redundant military personnel. We support the training centre in Nis located at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Nis University. Our office funded the project of English language training for officers (PELT) and finances attendance of Serbian/ Montenegrin officers at military training courses in the Netherlands or other countries. In cooperation with defence departments from other embassies we take part in numerous other successful projects, sometimes providing support to the security sector reform through programs carried out by local or international NGO’s in the field.

Another important activity of the defence attaché is to provide defence and security advice to the Ambassador and the Dutch government.

The defence attaché in Belgrade is also accredited for Montenegro.

Contact:
Col Jan Van den Elsen, defence attaché
Mr Edwin Huurdeman, assistant defence attaché
Ms Sonja Papak, interpreter