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18: UAP Coalition Netherlands
118 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, I speak with Joachim Dekkers, the founder of UAP Coalition Netherlands. We delve into his journey, starting with how the 2017 New York Times article about U.S. Navy pilots encountering UAP sparked his interest. Joachim shares how this curiosity led him to explore similar cases in Europe and ultimately form a coalition focused on UAP from the perspectives of law enforcement, aviation, and military professionals.
Our conversation covers his mission to remove the stigma surrounding UAP experiences and his push for serious research and cooperation with government bodies. We discuss the coalition's work with European institutions, the importance of flight safety, and efforts to improve UAP reporting across Europe.
Overall, this episode offers a fascinating look at how personal ambition can evolve into a full-scale movement aimed at fostering transparency and policy change in the realm of UAP.
UAP Coalition Netherlands: https://uapcoalitienederland.nl/en/
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Transcript
Introduction and listener support
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to European UFOs. I'm your host Sebastian and as always if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to leave a review and share it on social media. It's your support that helps the show grow and reach more listeners.
00:00:28
Speaker
Also, if you want to support me in keeping the show ad free, then please go to buymeacoffee.com. I truly appreciate all contributions.
Joachim Deckers' UAP journey begins
00:00:39
Speaker
Today we have a special guest, Joachim Deckers, the founder of UAP Coalition Netherlands. Joachim's interest in UAP began in 2017 after reading the now famous New York Times article about US Navy pilots encountering UAP. This piqued his curiosity and led him to explore similar cases in Europe.
00:01:01
Speaker
Eventually, he formed a coalition focused on UAP, particularly from the perspective of professionals in law enforcement, aviation and the military.
Goals and challenges of UAP Coalition Netherlands
00:01:11
Speaker
In our conversation, we dive into Joachim's background, how he started the UAP Coalition Netherlands and his mission to remove the stigma around UAP experiences. We also talk about his push for serious research and cooperation with government bodies.
00:01:28
Speaker
The coalition's work with European institutions, the importance of flight safety, and their efforts to improve UAP reporting across Europe are key topics we cover. Overall, this episode offers a fascinating look at how a personal ambition can evolve into a full-scale movement aimed at fostering transparency and policy change in the realm of UAP. Hello, Joachim. Welcome to European UFOs. How are you doing?
00:01:57
Speaker
ah Great. Thanks, so Sebastian. Thanks for ah for having me today. It's really lovely to have you even on what is a very gloomy autumn day in Berlin. But yeah, so definitely, definitely nice to talk about UFOs. Absolutely. And could you give the listeners an idea of who you are, what your background is, and most importantly, what got you interested in and the topic of UAP?
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So, uh, uh, my name is Joachim Decker and I have a background in the automotive sector, but throughout my life, uh, my parents and my grandparents taught me to, that it's important to help other people. So I've been doing a lot of volunteer work and, um, yeah, I, uh, I studied international business and, uh, North American studies and, uh, yeah. So, um, that's.
00:02:54
Speaker
A little bit about myself. And um with without background, how did you get interested in UAP? Was it just by
Building the coalition and removing UAP stigma
00:03:02
Speaker
coincidence? Was it something that had interested you for a very long time? yeah that This is actually quite an interesting question. So I wasn't interested in the topic at all. The only thing I knew about it was you know the the movies that came out or TV series. and Then you know I just kept an open mind, didn't think about it, just enjoyed ah what I was watching most of the time. But what got me really interested was the fact that I'm interested in geopolitics as well. So I was reading in 2017, I was reading the New York Times article about Commander Fravor, Commander Dietrich and their you know their experience with the Tic-Tac, UAP.
00:03:48
Speaker
and So I started reading the article and I was like, okay, so here we have people, professionals, trained observers. I mean, the United States government spends a lot of money on their training. They fly in jets that are, you know, close to a hundred million ah dollars per jet. They see something that they cannot explain.
00:04:18
Speaker
Then they come back to their ship and they want to report it. And, you know, within, like Commander Fravor said, within seconds, ah news like this spreads within their their their organization.
00:04:35
Speaker
You know, and people started making fun of that. You know, X-Files tunes and movies like Independence Day and all these things. and you know The only thing that they wanted to do was just report something that they could not explain, that their weapons systems officer saw, and you know that that that radar picked up, you know other sensor platforms. So why is this? And so for me, what was but but got my heart starting to pound was the fact that they were not being taken seriously.
00:05:09
Speaker
So for me, the fact that they saw something that they couldn't explain, you know, for some other people, that's really interesting. You know, also for me, it's interesting, but the most thing, ah but most important thing was for me was like, okay, so what's going on here? Why do we not take these trained observers seriously? So what I did was I i started looking more into the topic and I found more stigma. Then I started looking in the Netherlands, ah you know, are there,
00:05:38
Speaker
trained observers here as well in this country who might've saw something that they couldn't explain. And that was the case. And I started looking in the European Union as well. Same situation. Yeah, so so that's what got me ah interested in the in in the topic because I wanted to, you know, ah I wanna help people. I wanna help other people who, you know,
00:06:06
Speaker
Other people are not helping. And, um, I think it's very interesting that the 2017 article really prompted your interest in the topic. Um, you actually, my, my first guest who, um, said this was the case, I think, um, all the others kind of either had a preexisting interest also or whatever. But, um, this is really fascinating because you always hear about that 2017 was a but breakthrough point in, um, in this topic.
00:06:34
Speaker
And you, I think are a very good example for this. So um take us a bit further then. So you had this interest in UAP um through the article. So it was, I triggered you to look at this more, more seriously. You wanted to two give it an altruistic angle to help people. How did you, how did UAP coalition Netherlands then come about? Yeah. So.
00:07:02
Speaker
What happened was I just felt that I needed to do something for these professionals who experienced something that I cannot explain. I mean, we're all adults. We need to be able to speak about this ah without having, you know, Hollywood movies in our mind or whatever. I mean, we're all adults and this situation, especially because what happened with ah Commander Fraver and Dietrich, you know, the UAP was spotted and also witnessed by so other sensor platforms. So that was you know that's that's that's a compelling case. So what I did was I started looking, can I do something about this? And I soon found out that there were other people like me, but everybody was an island. Everybody was doing things by themselves. now And if you truly want to achieve something, and especially in government, you need to
00:08:01
Speaker
get together, form a group of people. And so I started expanding or finding a team to work with. And I just came up with a name, uh, UAP coalition in Netherlands, uh, because I first wanted to focus on the Netherlands only. I thought, uh, yeah, although it's a small country, it's going to be, you know, uh, as a volunteer, uh, a big marathon to run.
00:08:30
Speaker
So let's see yeah ah let's see how far we can get. So I started ah talking to other people who were interested in the topic, and I told them about my ID. And then you know some of them said, look, we want to join. And yeah, that's that's how the the coalition was was formed. And um this was last year
Engagement with government and EU on UAP reporting
00:08:53
Speaker
or already a couple of years ago. When when did you set it up?
00:08:57
Speaker
so from 2017 when I got interested, it took me a few years just to get to know that the topic more because you know eighty I had to catch up on 80 years of information and i'm still I'm still trying to catch up. That's why I'm grateful that some of the team members that and that ah that are in the coalition are like ah walking libraries of Alexandria, as I like to call them, because you know if if if I have a question, I just call them and you know and they have
00:09:28
Speaker
all this information immediately available while I'm still sometimes floating in the dark you know on a certain topic. ah But that's the that's the beautiful thing but beautiful thing about the coalition is it that everybody has their own little expertise ah which day you know and which in which we come together.
00:09:47
Speaker
cool Could you tell us a bit more about the team and how it is set up? Do you have experts from different fields and how do they contribute to the overall mission? Yeah, so what I do with ah every organization that I start or help is basically I make sure that this topic is multidisciplinary. So we need to have people not only being able to think inside their own box, but also outside of the box. You know, we we have, so we meet a lot. We speak a lot to each other because everybody is able to contribute and you know, some people have insights that some other people don't. So currently we have, as you can see on our website, officially we have ah seven volunteers.
00:10:37
Speaker
ah with ah three ambassadors. I will tell you a little bit more about the ambassador program that I started in a little bit. But there are also volunteers which are behind the scenes. ah People who do not want to have their face public ah due to their you know work or whatever, because as you know, there's still some stigma ah around the topic, although it's it's already ah starting to dissolve.
00:11:05
Speaker
you know Everybody's working hard on that. so ah yeah we um i mean so of Of course, because we're a nonprofit NGO, we have a special tax status ah within the Dutch government. We were officially recognized by the European Union.
00:11:27
Speaker
we're part ah of where ever We've been recognized and we have an EU transparency ah register number. so yeah we we We have to have an official chairman, we have to have a treasurer, ah we have to have a secretary, you know we have to have a board, we have to have statutes, bylaws, we have all kinds of regulation regulations. ah We're also big advocates for good governance, so we have a good governance set of regulations and ah yeah you can find all these on our ah on on our website.
00:12:03
Speaker
yeah so Is there anything you want to know specifically about a team member that that interests you? or or Yes, so I think we're probably going to get to that later, but I was quite intrigued by um your colleagues, Andre's presentation at the European Parliament earlier this year. I think that was fantastic, but we might get into that later. Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:27
Speaker
um Yes, so what ah I think it's very important to perhaps at this point also outline what the objectives of UOP Coalition Netherlands are because you are not a typical, um how can I say this, ufological research group to put it that way, right? So I think you are more And then that that kind of, in my opinion, also makes it unique is that you're focusing on the political spectrum of this and how you can perhaps, but I'll give the word over to you, um, what the main objective is. Yeah. So we have several, uh, goals. Basically, uh, what we try to do is, uh, try to, uh, promote support, uh, research awareness, cooperation and, uh, regulation.
00:13:16
Speaker
on unidentified anomalous phenomena. The thing is, if we want to do serious scientific research, that will take a lot of funding. And we're a volunteer organization. We're nonprofit. We exist only through ah donations from others, you know which is not a lot. And so we fund most of all the activities we do ourselves.
00:13:44
Speaker
so The foundation that we first want to take care of is remove the stigma as much as possible. Let's be able to talk about this topic topic in ah in an adult way, you know, in a serious matter. Then let's have the decision makers and politicians get involved and let's have some regulations to improve flight safety. Let's have some regulations in place or
00:14:14
Speaker
ah pilot programs for research. And then let's have the people with the scientific backgrounds who are a lot smarter than ah than I am on that field. ah let's Let them do the all the research. But let's build a foundation ah through you know raising awareness, starting cooperations, promoting research and and support on the on the on the topic.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yes, and I think um so I can easily imagine how one can create awareness in the general public, you know, through social media, etc. But um I think what you're doing is, ah yeah in a sense, um a lot more challenging because you're also trying to raise awareness amongst the government. um So how how do you go about doing this? Were there meetings with the Dutch government, for instance, where you pitched this topic or? Yeah, so Like I said before, ah first our focus was on the Netherlands. But if you say if you speak to any country within the European Union, you already you know you're already yeah working in the European Union as well. So everything is so much intertwined. There are laws from the European Union which actually transcend ah national laws of individual countries within the European Union. so
00:15:44
Speaker
it's ah you know it's ah It's a cooperation between the you know between the European Union and the visual nation. So what we did was, and and your audience can also find this on our website because you know it's important to be transparent about this. ah We just tried to to do as much as we could, have meetings with ah with the the Dutch government. So for example, I was in the beginning of of when we started and our statutes weren't even officially notarized. ah we were already or I was already in a House of Representatives asking questions on the floor about about UAP.
00:16:27
Speaker
and we had you know we we we and Every time there's something significant, we send out press releases. So we had a few dutch news or national Dutch newspapers ah write about UAP, write about our coalition.
00:16:43
Speaker
And then you know we also spoke to the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water, ah which is responsible for airspace safety, ah flights flight safety. So we spoke to them. We spoke or we speak to them. We speak to the Dutch Ministry of Defence. And actually, in the beginning of this year, we had a really interesting conversation with ah both ministries at the same time. Now that doesn't happen a lot. It was quite unique. And ah ah the good thing is that, you know, we spoke for more than two hours on UAP. So we gave them big presentation on history and science, flight safety, airspace security, ah stigma. We also brought some some witnesses, you know, and the representatives from both ministries were really, really intrigued
00:17:42
Speaker
ah Really respectful and yeah good good things happen during and after that after that meeting. so yeah We've been doing a yeah a lot in the Netherlands.
00:17:55
Speaker
Was there any indication that, for instance, the Ministry of Defense was already well briefed on this issue, or was it new completely new territory for them? What was your impression? Because you would assume that, you know, UEP traversing sensitive airspace would be on the radar, so to speak, of the Ministry of Defense. What was your impression? An interesting thing.
00:18:22
Speaker
to mention is that there's a case in the Netherlands, which is not very well known. It's the Schusterberg airbase. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yes, I like it. It's it's one the one with the big triangle, right? Yeah, yeah. yeah So ah for your audience, in February 1979, there was an active airbase in the Netherlands, a Dutch airbase, and there were There was an American side. They they yeah they ah rented it or whatever. They they shared it. And 12 Dutch military personnel saw a triangle three lights in the shape of a triangle ah slowly hover over the entire airbase. And you know of of course, it left this left a really big impact on their lives.
00:19:18
Speaker
and The Dutch Air Force did an investigation. They said it was a temperature inversion. But the 12 military men, they they didn't believe there the the andvo the Air Force investigation team. ah They felt like you know they were being sticked stigmatized ah when they went home. Some of them even you know got laughed at by their own family. So it was a really, the way they were treated was absolutely horrible. And your audience ah actually One of our team members, Brom Rosa, he made a documentary on the Sustaberg case. It's showing in cinemas in the Netherlands, and it's i'm I'm not sure when it... There's a trailer on YouTube ah with English subtitles. I don't have the link available, but I'm i'm sure that when people look for Sustaberg case or Brom Rosa ah that they can
00:20:17
Speaker
find or perhaps you can do something on your channel for, you know, hey perhaps even an interview with him because the case is a lot more in depth. But anyway, so we spoke to the Ministry of Defense about that case and they knew that that happened. They didn't say much about it, but we we conveyed the message that the way that they treated these military men back then in those days,
00:20:47
Speaker
is absolutely not done anymore nowadays. So that's something that we're working on to improve ah just culture within the mean ah you know the armed forces, ah within ah the aviation world, as as you might call it, and also within that ah law enforcement police. The just culture topic is is very important regarding UAP and removing the stigma.
00:21:15
Speaker
And is there any um known or official attempt to record UAP by the government in the Netherlands, or is this just something that either we don't know if they do it or they probably just don't do it? Not that we are aware of, but in the Netherlands, so the Netherlands bought the F-35 fighter planes.
00:21:41
Speaker
Actually, last week we or two weeks ago, we said goodbye to all F-16s.
00:21:48
Speaker
Beautiful. I saw them coming over our house, and it was absolutely it was it was amazing to see. But ah anyway, so we have the F-35s. Now, if you if you purchase F-35s, you also need to upgrade the ground radar. So that's what the Netherlands is doing. ah We're upgrading our radar systems and, yeah,
00:22:08
Speaker
Perhaps ah they will start seeing more ah UAP now. I know that UAP are being seen, but I don't have any numbers on that. This is all unofficial word of mouth in information.
Challenges in UAP reporting and standardization
00:22:29
Speaker
So I think um reporting is already one of the most important things in and with UAP and um UFOs. And destigmatizing the topic obviously is removing one barrier towards reporting. But if setting up a reporting structure is part of fewer objectives, how would you go about doing this? I mean, I know you haven't tackled this in in practice yet, but how if you had If you had the funds available now, how would you set up a reporting structure for UAP? That's a really good question and a very difficult one to answer. The topic is multidisciplinary. So where would you even start? So what we're first ah doing is ah we're having ah conversations, meetings with the European Aviation Safety
00:23:26
Speaker
agency, EASA. We had a meeting with them and with the European Commission because a former member of parliament, Mr. Francisco Guerrero, he asked a few parliament parliamentary questions to the European Commission earlier this year. And the interesting thing was that the European Commission answered and they said that it's already possible to report ah UAP under a certain category. Now, so we were surprised by that answer because none of the ambassadors that we have who are pilots or pilots who have been reporting their sightings to us knew of this category. So what we did was we had a sit down with everybody and we started look going through the categories and we found that there's no such category.
00:24:26
Speaker
So it's misinformation by the European commission. So I contacted the European commission and said, look, you gave an answer, but the the answer is incorrect. Uh, it's something that we need to improve. So can we have a conversation? So basically what I did was I went to Brussels, uh, sat down with the European commission and AASA, uh, representative from them. And I said, look, this, this category doesn't exist. So.
00:24:54
Speaker
in light of flight safety and the fact that other countries are saying EUAP are a flight safety risk, we need to improve the reporting system that you already have, because there is already a general reporting system within the European Union on any occurrence. So if a pilot, you know if if a bird comes too close to an airplane, they can report. um and you know And there are many, many, many, many more categories like this.
00:25:24
Speaker
So ah we said, look, let's let's implement unidentified anomalous phenomena in this category system that you already have. And let's start there, because then we have a already recognized reporting system by the European Union, which is used by the rest of the countries in the European Union, which is known by you know pilots and you know organizations that they fly for. So let's do that. But unfortunately, you know they said that They didn't want to do that. And ah they they told us, you know, look, you need to go to the transport committee of the European Parliament and they need to tell us, we want you to implement a UAP category. So this is basically on the flight safety issue. So your question is, I mean, it's a very good question, but it's difficult for me to answer because at the moment we still do not know when and how exactly
00:26:25
Speaker
ah category will be implemented. Because if we have our own ah reporting system from the UAP Coalition Netherlands, we just simply don't have the funding right now to have you know to get the people to work on this. So we first want to lay a base, a foundation, and then grow from there.
00:26:47
Speaker
I mean, extending the set of available categories, I think is a superb approach because it also comes with a certain standardization and official signature. So if there is absolute a category for UAP.
00:27:03
Speaker
Absolutely. You do have it available for analysis. And just out of curiosity, what happens um with the data from the current category? So for instance, let's say an aviation act expert, a pilot reports an EMS with a bird. and Is that then registered um on a country level or is there a EU database for such incidents? The military and the police is a whole different topic.
00:27:30
Speaker
So if we stick to the aviation side regarding your your question is this is how it works. So an aviation professional experienced something that they want to report. The way it works is they first report it within their own organization. There are safety managers working for all the big airlines and the smaller airlines as well. This is just simply mandatory and they receive the reports. Now the safety manager,
00:27:57
Speaker
they or he or she decides whether it's important enough to push it up to a higher level. ah So do we does it stay within the company itself or do we bump it up to a national level or do we even report it to the European ah system? And some reports will just remain within the organization.
00:28:27
Speaker
ah Most of them, they get to a national level and international level. Now, ah so far they have received, the European Union has received 3 million ah reports since they started using the ah European Union reporting system. Now, and I might be off by one or two, but there are around 60, which are absolutely unknowns.
00:28:55
Speaker
So they, they have absolutely no idea what they are. And that information is not public. So a YASA, they have a report every year on occurrences, you know, and, and, and, and, and and whatnot, but the specifics are not publicly available. Unfortunately. yeah So we only have the numbers.
00:29:22
Speaker
But I think that's some already quite ah quite an interesting subset would be great to absolutely yeah get your hands on it. um Just for our American listeners, do you know if there are, is there a possibility within Europe to file FOIA requests or was that, that's probably then also on a national level as opposed to a European level, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
there is a ah So on ah in the European Union, all the member states, ah they have ah freedom of information acts if you call it for the American listeners. So you can file a FOIA on national level, but it's also on European level.
00:30:00
Speaker
that That makes sense things a lot easier then. Can we talk a bit about um the flight safety aspect of all of this? Because I do realize that this is an angle and a particular position you're coming from. It's not only your organization that's coming from that angle, but also within the States and also on a European level. Why this particular angle? um Could you just explain the surlessness?
00:30:27
Speaker
I don't exactly understand your your question. the um So air safety um is is an aspect that has been um talked about jointly with UAP yeah and um there is an implicit idea of UAP being potentially a threat if we want to phrase it from a military perspective or simply a safety issue from an aviation perspective.
00:30:55
Speaker
So I was wondering, were there any cases that prompted this sort of um angle on perspective on the topic or is it framed or is it was it caused by something else? No, it's a good question. So ah basically, the these angles that we're using for the coalition and to improve ah is because we spoke to the witnesses.
00:31:25
Speaker
And those witnesses are experts in their field. And we asked them, look, so for example, the first pilot that I spoke to, I asked him and I said, you know, look, ah how did it make you feel? And he said, well, I was, you know, I, I lost concentration. I was completely focused on the, on the object. The maneuvers it made were.
00:31:54
Speaker
a flight safety risk at that moment. And you know when you speak to more aviation professionals, they almost all of them, they say the same thing. So and then the conclusion for us is flight safety issue. Military-wise, all of them, what they say, look, this is this is a threat, a possible threat. Most of them say it's a possible threat. But ah the way that they think is you know we need to mitigate that. we need to have protocols in place or guidelines or something ah you know to to to make sure that we're being able to report it and then being able to study it. And with the police, exact the same exactly the same thing. And then in the United States, with all the things happening there, in all the official ah writings, ah they mentioned flight safety risk, they mentioned possible national security threat. Everybody's basically saying this saying the same thing.
00:32:52
Speaker
So the angles that we are using are not confined to the Netherlands, European Union, or the United States. No, it's global. And in your discussions you're currently having with various government bodies, is this also something they are sympathetic towards? Are they appreciative of the fact that it might be a threat or um flight safety issue? Absolutely. And the way they listen to the witnesses the way they listen to us, the way they ask, you know, the questions that they ask, the way they speak to us, all of them consider this a serious topic. And it's important to know for the listeners, there has not been one moment, not one second when I speak ah to, you know, anybody from
00:33:49
Speaker
politicians to decision makers to, it doesn't matter who I speak to, I'm always taken seriously. The witnesses are always being treated with respect. Yeah, that's that was something that really made, you know, it gives me a good feeling to know that ah we're finally out of that 80 year, you know, making fun of ah situation.
00:34:18
Speaker
At least from my experience, I don't know what others. you know Well, the I mean, thanks for sharing. And I think it's very helpful to get an insight perspective from someone who has actually had those conversations because ah you know just receiving your information on UEP from social media, et cetera, does come with its own set of problems. And they're often weird dichotomies that are set up. Um, but it's very helpful to get that sort of insight perspective. Uh, your earlier, you mentioned your ambassador program, perhaps you could talk a bit about this because I think it's also unique in a sense. So, um, it's important for professionals in, you know, trained observers in aviation, uh, armed forces and police to be able to speak to somebody and
00:35:09
Speaker
What's important to mention for your audience is why are we just focusing on this group these these groups of people? The fact is basically there was already there is already a group of people reporting, whoever reporting who have a reporting ah system in place in the Netherlands, and they focus on you know mostly civilians.
00:35:35
Speaker
But we wanted to do this for just professionals. Also, we have a small team. We don't have the budget. And ah sometimes it's possible to receive additional information, like you know radar information. So that's why we're focusing on on professionals. So what we found was that, and this is what almost all of them say, is, so for example, let's take a pilot. So a pilot flies from country A to country B.
00:36:04
Speaker
and You know, they arrive in country B and they're waiting in this lounge for aviation professionals, you know, when they start talking to each other while having, you know, a cup of coffee or a beer or whatever. And, you know, and then the stories come and, you know, and, and, and that's when we found out that most of them. They, they have stories to tell. They have experiences with UAP and they speak to it to each other.
00:36:31
Speaker
Uh, same in military, you know, uh, some of these guys, you know, they're really close, you know, they, they work in teams or, or you know, platoons or whatever. And, you know, and, and, and it's a, it's a tight group of people and they, and then they talk to each other, you know, like, like friends, like brothers, sisters, you know, and, and the same with police. But, uh, so we thought, okay, so how do we get more of these professionals to open up?
00:36:59
Speaker
And I, and I said, well, let's start an ambassador program. Let's have professionals who want to come forward. Let's ask them if they want to be part of the ambassador program. So they will be able. So if somebody wants to report something that they've seen and they don't want to report it within their o organization, because there hasn't been, you know, any information on the topic within the organization, or they're afraid to talk about it because, you know, somebody else got ridiculed or whatever.
00:37:30
Speaker
let's ah Let's have other people, like-minded people in the same ah profession. let's Let's have them speak to each other. So we have a few ambassadors on our website. We have a Christian, Taco, and Nick. Christian and Taco are both really experienced pilots. And you know they said, look, we want to have our face on the website. We want to be public. ah you know People can ask our numbers. They can email us you know because we've I feel it's important that this topic needs to be spoken about and people need to be able to speak to us in confidence. so and and Nick is a veteran. you know He has a a lot of experience in the Dutch armed forces. and yeah so He's doing that for ah for ah for our for the armed forces in general, in the Netherlands, in the European Union, or you know if anybody else wants to contact him, that that's fine as well. And there are ambassadors who are silent ambassadors.
00:38:29
Speaker
So they are behind the scenes within their own organization because you know we're not talking about organizations that are only a thousand people.
EU Parliament event and ongoing efforts
00:38:39
Speaker
No aviation, armed force police, they're gigantic organizations with a lot of people. So the more ambassadors we have, the you know the better. And yeah, we're really grateful for those people that you know they want to help out and they and and they see the importance of this topic.
00:38:54
Speaker
And what happens if you, let's say you are a pilot and um you reach out to one of the ambassadors so you can share your story and is there also some sort of um ambassador group then where you can kind of regularly exchange or support each other? as there Is there something like that in place? or Yeah, absolutely. So we have a contact form on our website. A person writes an email.
00:39:23
Speaker
All those emails first come to me. They're not read by anybody else. So it stays confidential. And then if they say, look, we want to speak to an ambassador, you know then i then usually what they say is they already say, look, I want to speak speak to Taco or Christian or Nick or you know whoever. And then I just to forward their email to them. And then they start the conversation. And yes.
00:39:52
Speaker
you know Sometimes they want to ah stay confidential with with one of our ambassadors, sometimes not. and of Of course, they have a group where they speak to each other, but some of them don't want to be in in in a group. you know They just want to ah share their story, and that's it. yeah and and And most of the time, it's word of mouth. So we have the silent ambassadors, and they you know and they they hear something, and then they say, look, ah we're part of a European coalition in the Netherlands.
00:40:23
Speaker
Did you know that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know, they introduce everybody. and ah so Have you also had individuals from the military with potential high security clearance already come forward to you or has it so far been mainly from the yeah commercial aviation segment? It's been a mix between ah aviation, armed forces and police. Number one is aviation professionals.
00:40:51
Speaker
ah Two is armed forces, three is police. And through your conversations with veterans and pilots and so on, um this also produces really interesting UAP data. and Is there any attempt to informally record them somewhere or um has this not been implemented? ah So ah do you mean like a database system? Something like that, yeah.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, what we do is ah we we gather all the reports ah from ah witnesses. So yeah, and and you know we have all the we have all the stories. And you know if if it's recent, then we try to find out more. you know if there Is there other data available through the organizations that they are working for or that they have been working for?
00:41:47
Speaker
perfect yeah I think that's going to make a really um valid contribution to to the topic in a month, if not years to come. um I think one of the um your greatest achievements or the um yeah and ambitions was to bring the topic towards the and EU Parliament earlier this year.
00:42:10
Speaker
um Coincidentally, I actually had Eduardo Russo on last episode, so that so this makes a good a good sequence now. nice and But we did we only briefly touched on on the event, so it would be lovely if you could give us an overview of what happened in March and why it's so important. Yeah, so ah what we do as a coalition, and we try to reach as many members of parliament to get the you know the topic spoken about, you know to have a dialogue on on UAP and to do all the things that you know we try to do, which I explained. So one of those members of parliament, former members of parliament, I must say, ah Francisco Guerrero, we we met him last year for the first time and you know and he was intrigued. He was, at that point in time, the only one who wanted to come forward and saying, look, I
00:43:04
Speaker
i I need to do something with this topic. I want to help. you know We need to have serious ah we have need to have a serious conversation about this. ah We need to have serious scientific research being done. and we As a European Union, we need to have something in place ah like some other countries have. um So one of the things that we spoke to him about and that you know said that one of his ideas was, so let's see if we can organize an event.
00:43:35
Speaker
within the European parliament. Are you able to assist in that? So, i you know, of course I said, yeah, sure, you know, we'll be more than ah happy to help. So his team and and we we started setting this this up, this this event. Yeah. And, you know, we invited some people, we made it ah possible for others to watch online.
00:44:01
Speaker
We invited a lot of members of parliament, decision makers, assistants, you know, and and yeah we had several people speaking ah during the event on several different topics. It was really interesting. ah Unfortunately, i I was ill, so I couldn't come to the the event itself. But my colleague Andre, he he did a great job ah replacing me.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, so so it wasn't ah it was a really interesting event. Actually, we have a special piece page on our website, which ah shows you know what it was about, gives a summary on on everything, on every presentation that was given. ah So we had ah Francisco, ah he's you know he did an introduction, we had Andre of our coalition who said something about UAP, Eduardo Russo,
00:44:59
Speaker
He spoke about the history. We had a Swedish astronomer, Dr. Beatriz Villaruel, ah who ah who spoke, who gave a presentation. We had one of our ambassadors, a Christian van Heest, who spoke about his own experiences. We had Ryan Graves from Americans for Safe Aerospace. He joined online and he gave a short, or he gave a presentation. and you know We had a Q and&A.
00:45:29
Speaker
There was somebody there from EASA, the Aviation Safety Agency in the European Union. yeah it was really It was a historic historic event.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah, it it really was. And I think the experts from not only from different disciplines, but also um with um different perspectives on the topic you brought together there was really um bringing it home that does this important topic. So you had some senior academic there, their trees and then also EU um um politicians and all in the same room. I think that's just um a very, very great setup. What was the aftermath of the event? Has anything of what you tried to achieve there already been discussed a bit further? Or are we still in this kind of limbo state where um they've kind of recognized that this is important, but um you know, things take a long time in politics.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, so a good question. what Basically, the main goal of this event was to introduce UAP in an accessible way to you know members of parliament, other policymakers, and interested ah you know professionals, assistants within the European Union. there And you know even now, there are still people who don't know anything about the topic. So we just wanted to have you know, a a easy access introductory level conversation on the topic. And that has helped us because, you know, the event was in March and then we had the elections a few months later. Then everybody goes on vacation, you know, during the summer. So nothing happens in Brussels and and for that matter in any
00:47:34
Speaker
a governmental organization, ah you know, politicians in this case, um during the summer. So ah what we start to witness now is that now that the all the politicians are chosen, they're in their committees in the European Parliament, you know, everybody is settling in. ah We're now starting to make appointments with other members of parliament. and We always refer to the event in in in March,
00:48:05
Speaker
Some of them are aware, ah some of them are not because you know of course theyre they they get they get so much they have so much work, they receive so many emails and so many phone calls that it's impossible for them to you know keep track of everything that's going on. But the the the event is sure you know is is is helping us move ah to move forward. yeah Excellent. I think this is really what we needed now to also bring it on a political level and raise awareness. Thanks thanks a lot, Joachim. I think this was a really lovely overview and we've learned a lot about the UAP Coalition Netherlands. Perhaps before wrapping this up, could you give us an idea of what's on the agenda for you within the next few weeks or next few months? Is there anything, are there any concrete deliverables you're working on?
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah, ah in ah I don't know exactly ah when, but we were going to have several appointments with members of parliament. I'm in the process of making appointments with them. There's good contact. ah But like I said, you know, everybody had to get settled in, you know, new commissions, new new tasks that they have. So we want to move forward with the aviation safety side, the flight safety side.
00:49:26
Speaker
and We want to move forward with ah defense, European defense. There's a lot of, you know, with ah with ah with Russia and Ukraine you and, you know, China also, all the tensions around the globe, European Union is starting to focus more on itself regarding, you know, what do we need to do to defend the European Union? So military wise, there's a lot of things happening and, you know, we're trying to achieve awareness there as well and you know build a foundation for just culture and
Future plans and media engagement
00:49:59
Speaker
reporting. There's ah also the the European Space Law. So we did we gave feedback to the European Commission on the ah proposal of the European Space Law, ah which has not been signed yet. ah Supposedly that's going to happen beginning of next year. So we're probably going to have some stakeholder meetings as well.
00:50:24
Speaker
Uh, yeah, what else? Uh, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's busy. We're just trying to keep knocking on doors and trying to see if we can open doors. Uh, also with, you know, media, uh, having, you know, being guests on podcasts, uh, like, like yourself, you know, and, uh, yeah, we're just, uh, we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing. Something that I always say is this is not a sprint. It's a marathon. It's a very long marathon. I mean, we,
00:50:51
Speaker
Most people have been running this marathon for 80 years. And I understand that, you know, all of them are impatient. They want to move forward. But people have to understand that the vast majority of people in general have absolutely no idea about the topic or they're not interested or, you know, and we just need to reach the right people to to get the ball moving forward here in the European Union and in the Netherlands. and i hope that ah this podcast and this interview that we did will help interest other people and motivate ah other people in other European countries to do something similar that you know we are doing. And you know so you know group together, get together, form a team, but do it in a formal way, you know an association or a foundation or whatever you want to do, and then you know just talk to your government representatives.
00:51:50
Speaker
raise awareness there, because most people don't have no clue at all. And after that's done, the scientists can start looking into what's this? What what what is this? What are we you know what are we dealing with? you know and they And they can receive funding. So I really hope that you know this this this this interview will help ah motivate other people to to to do ah similar things that we're we're doing. And I'm always more than helpful.
00:52:19
Speaker
or at I'll, you know, if if, if anybody has a question, you know, feel, feel free to contact me or members of my team. And if you need help setting up something or, you know, whatever, just, just reach out.
00:52:33
Speaker
Perfect. That is a very, um that very, very good keyword here and because how can people reach out to you? So obviously you have the website, which I will put in the description of this episode. You also have a great YouTube channel, um but it's the best way to contact you via the form on your website or Puri. Yeah. The best way is just you use the contact, our email address. Just, you know, send us an email.
00:53:02
Speaker
And it doesn't matter you know if if even if there are trained observers listening right now and they have a story a story to tell or they just want to let us know, look, we saw saw something that we cannot explain. Thank you for what you're doing or whatever. It doesn't matter. Just feel free to contact us. ah We're more than happy to you know to receive your email, your message, and to help out you know if that's ah if that's if that's what you what
Conclusion and gratitude
00:53:32
Speaker
the person wants. so yeah Brilliant. Thanks a lot, Joachim, for being my guests today. Very, very valuable contribution to the field of UAP studies. and um yeah Looking forward to hearing more from you and UAP Coalition Netherlands in the future. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Sebastian, for what you do and the possibility