Deadly floods in Slovenia, wildfires in Italy and Greece and blistering heat in Spain: It’s been a summer of extremes in the European Union. Nestled in the gray streets of Brussels’ EU district, the bloc’s emergency response coordination center has been in 24/7 action — connecting countries’ emergency services, coordinating the deployment of rescue teams and kit, and trying to anticipate the next natural disaster.
On Monday, EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic announced that Germany and France were sending prefabricated bridges, excavation machinery and engineering teams to Slovenia in the aftermath of flooding; meanwhile Greece was sending Canadair aircraft to help Cyprus tackle wildfires; Late last week he announced that nine European countries were being monitored for “extreme” fire risk, five were facing flood alerts and two were under red alerts for high temperatures or rain.
All 27 EU countries plus nine nearby states including Turkey, Ukraine and Norway all contribute to the club but nations further afield can use the tool to call for help. Earlier this year, Canada drafted in European firefighters to battle forest blazes, and last year, water purification teams and doctors were sent to Pakistan as the nation battled devastating flooding.
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On Monday, EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic announced that Germany and France were sending prefabricated bridges, excavation machinery and engineering teams to Slovenia in the aftermath of flooding; meanwhile Greece was sending Canadair aircraft to help Cyprus tackle wildfires; Late last week he announced that nine European countries were being monitored for “extreme” fire risk, five were facing flood alerts and two were under red alerts for high temperatures or rain.
Lenarcic oversees the bloc’s Civil Protection Mechanism — a crisis management club set up back in 2001 to help countries pool emergency resources and beef up each other’s capacities to battle natural or man-made disasters.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for the European Union: Governments found themselves short on ventilators and masks, and unprepared for the scramble to set up mass testing facilities or overflow hospitals.
“Setting [up] our own fleet takes time given that global production of some types of firefighting planes has been paused,” European Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer told reporters in July.
European Commissioner Lanarcic has been praising the firefighters, engineers and medics responding to emergencies beyond their own borders over the past few weeks: “EU solidarity at its best,” he wrote in an online post on Monday.
Changing that would involve rewriting the bloc’s founding treaties, something national governments tend to be wary of in general for fear of handing over additional powers to Brussels.
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