Within hours of Portugal asking the EU for help as forest fires raged out of control near Coimbra and Leiria, “water bomber” planes were on their way from France, Italy and Spain as were around 120 Spanish firefighters and 26 vehicles.
Within a few days, Cyprus and Greece had also offered help to Portuguese firefighters — all coordinated by a small team of blue-uniformed European Commission officials in Brussels. The EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) had already been tracking the fire risk in Portugal on giant screens along one wall of the center’s crisis room days before the formal request was made.
Established in its current premises in 2013, the center operates around the clock with a staff of about 40 and is funded out of the EU’s civil protection budget of €39 million, a fraction of the €1.8 billion spent by the EU on humanitarian aid each year.
The ERCC coordinates and mobilizes the resources of 34 European countries — the EU28 plus Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Turkey — who participate in the EU’s civil protection mechanism, which provides aid and assistance in the aftermath of a disaster or crisis. To Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid and civil protection, it is a “visible manifestation” of the support that the EU can provide.
“It’s very critical to communicate with people that the EU is not only a bureaucracy, or directives, or something far away from the everyday life of the people,” Сhristos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid and civil protection.
Citing the collapse of support for the EU in his home country of Cyprus after the financial crisis, he pointed to a relief operation organized last year by the ERCC to fight forest fires as one reason why Cypriots are now looking on the bloc more favorably.
The EU’s ability to respond to disasters “is an instrument, a tool, which we can show in real terms… tangible European solidarity, not only inside Europe but also outside Europe,” he added.
Source: Politico. Read full article here.
27 June, 2017
