On Thursday 8 June, the Council of the EU is expected to adopt its conclusions on the EU’s resilience objectives. These are aimed at strengthening prevention, preparedness and collective response capacity to large-scale natural or man-made disasters, as well as guiding preparedness for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, particularly within the context of the war in Ukraine.
The draft conclusions obtained by EUROPE, which should be adopted without debate once they have been validated by the Member States’ representatives to the EU, are intended to promote the mobilisation of society as a whole and to provide political guidance for future work (see EUROPE 13190/8).
The EU Council should therefore support the European Commission’s communication ‘Acting together to tackle future emergencies’ and its recommendation to Member States on non-binding resilience targets in order to better prevent and collectively respond to major disasters (see EUROPE 13117/5).
In particular, it is intended to emphasise the importance of promoting complementarity and possible future synergies with other strands of work, both at EU and global level, such as the implementation of the Critical Entities Resilience Directive, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, and EU-NATO cooperation.
With regard to CBRN measures, the text recommends both short- and long-term measures.
Short-term CBRN measures. The European Commission would be invited to: - strengthen CBRN’s early warning capabilities; - ensure and facilitate discussions based on CBRN scenarios with the Member States, the Member States participating in the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) and the relevant organisations in order to explore new actions; - examine possibilities for providing Member States with regular information on the war in Ukraine and CBRN risks; - accelerate the certification process for CBRN capabilities that are registered in the European Civil Protection Reserve RescEU, continuing to strengthen RescEU capabilities and studying – along with Member States and international organisations – how CBRN capabilities available at national level or within other organisations can be used within the framework of the UCPM; - explore further opportunities to facilitate the acquisition of CBRN equipment by Member States, including through the framework of RescEU; - identify ways of further reducing the time taken to deploy capabilities in the event of CBRN incidents; - explore ways that make it easier for Member States to deploy CBRN capabilities in countries impacted by conflict and further explore the training of Ukrainian personnel.
In the long term. In particular, the European Commission would be invited to explore options to ensure that the UCPM is seen as a primary channel for equipment requests and to explore ways of improving market access for different types of CBRN equipment, ensuring the predictability of long-term procurement.
The draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/78d (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)