EU Commission strengthens Europe’s crisis response abilities

In response to a growing number of emergencies – particularly climate-related disasters – the European Commission is looking for better coordination and new tools to strengthen the bloc’s crisis-response abilities.

On 29 May, the Commission presented its evaluation of the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism (EUCPM) – a service where a national government can request assistance from other governments, in the event of a disaster they cannot handle alone.

The service was set up in 2001 and is available for EU and participating non-EU countries like Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Türkiye, and Ukraine.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Europe is the continent most affected by climate change. As it experiences more and more environmental disasters, civil protection services will increasingly be on the frontline.

Stronger coordination

The Commission needs to better organise itself internally, its assessment concludes, saying “it is time […] to develop an integrated approach to crisis management that brings together all the relevant Commission departments to work in a coordinated way”.

This will allow it to better support and complement national governments, who remain primarily responsible for preventing, preparing for, and responding to crises.

In the evaluation, the Commission warns that this coordination is essential to avoid “inefficiencies and potential duplication” which would undermine “the integrated, resilient, and effective European crisis management that European citizens expect”.

Reacting to a growing number of disasters 

As well as coordinating national governments, the Commission boasts its own crisis response services. In May, Euractiv visited the Commission’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) in Brussels.

The ERCC is focused on improving cooperation between EU countries in the field of civil protection, and specifically for the better management of natural and man-made disasters.

It also has an operational role. The centre decides whether to activate the EUCPM and coordinates the deployment of personnel, civil protection experts and equipment.

More than 500 EUCPM activations were initiated during the 2017-2022 period, five times more than the average for the previous decade.

In 2022 alone, the mechanism was activated 106 times, in response to fires in southern Europe and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the war in Ukraine and flooding in Pakistan.

[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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