Brussels, 20/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - ARETE 2014 is the codename of a civil protection exercise organised on Thursday 20 November by the European Commission in cooperation with the civil protection authorities and Belgian police in the Antwerp area (Belgium), to test the EU and member states' ability to efficiently manage complex, large-scale crises.
This field exercise essentially consists of: a fictitious scenario simulating an emergency situation that combines a terrorist attack using chemical products and hostage taking. Its aim is two-fold: strengthening the member states' capacity to tackle a major crisis, with the required level of coordination between them and test the capacity of the EU's crisis management coordination instruments to effectively respond to a human-based disaster. The exercise was supervised by Christos Stylianides, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs and Jan Jambon, the Belgian vice prime minister and home secretary. (AN)