CEDC meaning in Regional ?

The Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC) is a military collaboration consisting of the Central European states of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. Poland has an observer status in this cooperative framework.

The joint objective is enhancing the defence co-operation, including the pooling and sharing of defence capabilities of the member countries and organizing common training and exercises.Since the European migrant crisis of 2015-2016 the cooperation has focused on handling mass migration too.

The CEDC was created in 2010. All members are also members of European Union and all except Austria are in NATO. The presidency rotates yearly. As of 2021, the presidency is held by Croatia.

The CEDC geo-political borders are more or less the same borders of the former Habsburg Monarchy, and its successors, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary. Territory of participating states is 381,682 km2 while the territory of the Austrian Empire in 1804 was 698,700 km2.