Brussels, 12/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - Last week, the European Commission announced the launching of a new civil protection programme in the Mediterranean region (PPRD South 2) in Spring 2013 for three years. It will have a budget of €5 million.
The new civil protection programme will have a strong focus on prevention and preparation rather than on response to disasters. Cooperation between civil protection bodies will be developed and involvement of civil society encouraged. This announcement was made during a conference in Brussels marking the end of the current PPRD programme. The new programme is effectively the extension of a three-year long programme (PPRD-1) whose results proved far-reaching.
Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, said during her opening speech at the conference that, “In the last 20 years 1,085 disasters occurred in the Mediterranean region, killing almost 47,000 people. This means one disaster per week. No country can cope with such frequent and large challenges on its own, and clearly more and better regional cooperation is needed. The PPRD South is an example of the benefits of such cooperation brings not only to the countries of the region but also to their citizens by increasing disaster prevention, preparedness and response capacities” in this field.
The Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Fathallah Sijilmassi declared that they were prepared to contribute to these efforts with concrete and tangible projects that gradually lead southern Mediterranean countries towards adopting European civil protection mechanisms and standards. Southern Mediterranean countries will require technical expertise and support for developing their prevention, training, mutual assistance and information activities among the population; as well as to help fine-tune their prevention capacity. Fathallah Sijilmassi explained that they wanted to avoid any duplication of tasks but rather complement each other's action according to the principle of variable geometries, with each country free to become involved in programme components if they choose to do so. This precaution is a direct reference to the Barcelona Process, during which a programme was not able to get started due to the misgivings of certain southern Mediterranean countries about working with the Israelis. (FB/transl.fl)