Brussels, 15/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - It is time to end the wrangling. The Parliament calls for an EU civil protection force to be set in place immediately with the necessary technological and technical means needed to provide relief within 24 hours of a disaster striking. This request is set out in a recommendation adopted on Tuesday in Strasbourg (557 votes to 32 and 72 abstentions). “The EU needs a more coordinated, coherent and visible response capacity to face major disasters outside the EU. (…) It is high time that we recognise the political importance of reinforcing the EU disaster response capacity”, explains Iva Zanicchi (EPP, Italy), who is author of the own-initiative report on this.
Far from being a new structure, the civil protection force would be built on the EU's civil protection mechanism by making optimal use of instruments available and with the voluntary pooling of existing logistic means and human resources, as recommended in the 2006 Barnier report. This would, after repeated requests for this, finally allow the European Parliament to see proposals of this report implemented. The Parliament notes that the incidence of disasters causing major human, economic and environmental damage is increasing in the world whereas the Commission's budget for humanitarian disasters has not only been frozen but has undergone a slight fall in real terms over the past five years. All these factors make it all the more necessary for operations to be more effective, it said. The Parliament, however, calls for realistic budgets in which amounts earmarked for natural disasters or humanitarian work are based on the spending of previous years.
Although MEPs consider that the inclusion of civil protection and humanitarian aid in one and the same portfolio would increase the coherence of the EU's overall response to disasters, they urge for greater integration of working methods for civil protection and humanitarian aid within DG ECHO, while safeguarding their specific features by ensuring that there is a clear demarcation between their respective roles.
The Parliament calls on the Council and Commission to spell out arrangements for cooperation and coordination between the European External Action Service and the Commission when it comes to disaster response management outside EU territory. It points out to Council that the use of military capabilities and resources to support humanitarian aid operations should be on an exceptional basis and that the European consensus on humanitarian aid and the Oslo directives should be respected.
The Council and Commission are invited to cooperate in the implementation of an action plan for the visibility of European disaster response. “I believe that clear agreements and procedures should be established to ensure a dual visibility for both the member states and the European Union. However, the first and essential precondition for such dual visibility is that we have to be able to pool information and assets under a unified EU flag rather than under a national banner”, said Yva Zanicchi. (A.N./transl.jl)