Inter-institutional negotiations on the proposal for a strengthened EU civil protection mechanism will have to continue, said the chairwoman of the European Parliament's environment committee, Romania's Adina-Ioana Vălean (EPP), on Wednesday 10 October, indicating that a compromise effort would have to be made by the Council to successfully complete the dossier by the end of the year, as the Austrian Presidency wishes.
Deep divisions between the Council's and Parliament's positions remained, particularly on funding and disaster prevention, during the second trilogue negotiating meeting, which took place on Monday evening, 8 October (see EUROPE 12108).
"It is clear that at this stage, the gap between the European Parliament and Council's position will be difficult to bridge", Vălean said. The next trilogue will take place in early November.
As regards the budgetary aspects, the Parliament cannot accept the Council's position that all the necessary resources for the future mechanism to enhance the effectiveness of the European response to natural or human disasters, whether in the EU or elsewhere in the world, come solely from the redeployment of funds in the budget.
On prevention and the level of information to be shared between member states and the EU, the Council's position, which provides for automaticity between the repeated triggerings of the civil protection mechanism and the oversight procedure initiated by the Commission, is not acceptable. "It goes without saying that Parliament is opposed to any such automatism", the chairwoman of the parliamentary committee stressed.
Finally, profound differences remain on the creation of 'RescEU', this reserve of means to be used as a last resort when national capacities and those of the European Civil Protection Pool are insufficient to cope with disasters (see EUROPE 12070). The European Parliament considers that the Council's position leaves uncertainty as to how the system would be set up and its genuine added value.
The Austrian Presidency of the Council still wants an inter-institutional agreement before the end of its mandate. "But, unlike Parliament, which submitted compromise proposals, the Council has not made any proposals that deviate significantly from its initial position," says Vălean. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)