Brussels, 10/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - Many large-scale humanitarian crises - such as those in Syria, Central Africa and South Sudan - are far from being at an end as the Greek Presidency of the EU Council gets under way. Carrying on from the Lithuanian Presidency, Athens will seek to bring about greater coordination within the EU in order to ensure that the humanitarian response to this kind of man-made crisis - and to increasingly frequent natural disasters - is as effective and as fast as possible. It is important to have a joint assessment of the needs and deficiencies of international aid so that the member states and the European Commission may take well-informed decisions for both bilateral aid and for EU aid, the Presidency states. It also plans to support the efforts of the United Nations for strengthening and reforming the international humanitarian system.
Continuing to promote a link between humanitarian aid and development aid will be the Presidency's second priority, the third priority being to take forward work on risk reduction, resilience, disaster preparedness, the development of capacities to face up to disaster, and the opportunities provided by the private sector for implementing an innovative approach, mainly in the insurance field.
The Greek Presidency plans to contribute to effective application of the regulation establishing the corps of European Aid Volunteers, an innovation of the Lisbon Treaty that will be open to all European citizens who volunteer to take part in EU humanitarian operations throughout the world. For this, it will organise, in cooperation with the Commission and the European Parliament, a conference in Brussels for assessing the needs of partner organisations in terms of volunteer deployment, development of capacities and technical assistance. The regulation will be definitively adopted by the Parliament during the February plenary session (see EUROPE 10989).
The Greek Presidency also plans to ensure implementation of the action plan 2013-2020 for resilience in crisis-prone countries. (AN/transl.jl)