The Council and the Parliament, assisted by the European Commission, will be able to start inter-institutional negotiations on the proposal to reinforce the EU civil protection mechanism to improve the effectiveness of the collective response to natural or man-made disasters.
Meeting in Brussels on Wednesday 25 July, the ambassadors of the Twenty-Eight to the EU (Coreper) approved the negotiating mandate on behalf of the Council of the EU, which has now been officially granted to the Austrian Presidency (see EUROPE 12069).
Amongst other things, this mandate provides that in addition to the existing civil protection system, which is based on voluntary contributions and will be renamed the 'European civil protection pool', 'RescEU' will also be set in place, to be used as a last resort when the national capacities and those of the European civil protection pool are not enough to tackle large-scale disasters, or several taking place at the same time.
Under this mandate, the EU will co-fund the leasing, rental and acquisition of capacities, to be hosted by the member states acquiring them, whilst deployment and arbitration in cases of conflicting requests will be the responsibility of the Commission, working closely with the member states concerned.
If, furthermore, a member state requests the same type of assistance for the same type of disaster three times in three years, it will be required to provide the Commission with additional information concerning its disaster prevention and preparedness measures. The Commission, in cooperation with the member states, may establish consultation mechanisms to improve prevention, preparedness and coordination between member states that are prone to the same type of disaster (such as forest fires, for instance). The Commission will be responsible for establishing a network of EU civil protection knowledge to improve training and the sharing of civil protection and disaster management know-how. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)