Brussels, 22/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - A step towards the creation of the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps will be taken on Tuesday 23 November. By initiative of Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, the European Commission will adopt in Strasbourg a communication on this new instrument brought in by the Lisbon Treaty (Article 214.5) to provide a framework for joint voluntary contributions.
The aim of this future European voluntary corps is to reinforce the humanitarian actions of the EU and to improve their visibility, by offering the citizens the option to get involved in operations to rescue the victims of conflict and disasters the world over, avoiding any duplication of efforts with existing voluntary programmes.
The Commission's document will take stock of the existing voluntary programmes in order to identify trends, shortfalls and the possible options for getting the service up and running, recruiting volunteers and deploying them.
A broad public consultation was launched on 30 September at a conference of the interested parties in Brussels, which was attended by humanitarian workers, those involved in civil protection and volunteer organisations.
Subsequently, a pilot project will be launched in 2011, before the Commission presents a legislative proposal in 2012 on the rules and procedures for the functioning of this instrument, with a little delay on the timetable initially sketched out, as the voluntary corps will be operational in 2011 (EUROPE 10070 ). Volunteering is very popular, with 23% of EU citizens aged 15 years and above having taken part in this type of activity. (A.N/transl.fl)