Hans Das, Brussels

EU Crisis prevention − new structures and coordination The EU Commission continues actively the cooperation with main actors

Hans Das ........................................ 46 Nannette Bühl-Cazaubon.................. 48 Abraham (Avi) Bachar...................... 50

With the built-up of efficient operational staff capabilities, the EU shows its will to perform The role of the future European Emergency Response Centre

by Hans Das, Head of Unit Emergency Response, DG ECHO-Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, Brussels

The size and frequency of both natural and man-made disasters is on the rise. The year 2010 alone brought the earthquake in Haiti, the floods in Pakistan, and the explosion of the Deep - water Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In Europe, severe floods and storms as well as forest fires and the eruption of volcano Eyjafjallajökull have made headlines. With Japan being hit by the triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear incident, the year 2011 continues the general trend. In fact, the recorded annual number of disasters worldwide has increased fivefold from 78 in 1975 to nearly 400 today, and although the EU disaster response is well-established overall, new initiatives are needed to cope with these growing challenges. One such initiative is the establishment of the future European Emergency Response Centre.

European assistance to Japan and Libya The 11 March earthquake in Japan with its ensuing tsunami wave and damage of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are a strong reminder that even a highly developed country can be overwhelmed by disaster and needs to have reliable partners to provide support then. In response to the Japanese request for assistance, the EU reacted promptly. 14 Member States have made generous offers of assistance via the Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC), resulting in the delivery of 400 tons of EU assistance, including sophisticated protection equipment, as part of a coordinated EU effort to help Japan. Nine Member States have also made financial donations, alongside with the Commission’s € 10 million funding decision.

The MIC was in constant contact with the Japanese authorities and, amongst others, a team on the ground to identify the most pressing needs, to pool the European in-kind assistance and to offer it as a single, consolidated package. Throughout the emergency operation, Japan insisted on the need for a coordinated European approach combining the assistance of the different Member States. The Civil Protection team also coordinated the use of free-of-charge transport options to Japan, processed requests for European co-funding of transports where necessary, and enabled the delivery of the in-kind assistance directly to the affected prefectures. The burden on local capacities was thus minimized, and Japan highly appreciated the almost autonomous operation.

The Commission is also increasingly taking advantage of the synergies and complementarities between humanitarian aid and civil protection, as was recently shown by the Libya case. The EU Civil Protection Mechanism assisted in the evacuation of ca. 5,800 EU citizens and, in close cooperation with the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR, in the repatriation of more than 30,000 third country nationals who were stranded mostly at the Tunisian and Egyptian borders. At the same time, DG ECHO made 40 million EUR available to fund emergency humanitarian assistance for the population affected by the Libyan unrest, including repatriation efforts for

Hans Das Hans Das is Head of DG ECHO’s Emergency Response Unit since 1 May 2010. Previously, Hans Das was among others: 1997 Head of Legal Department in the International Commission for Real Property Claims (CRPC) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1999 Legal Officer at the United Nations Housing and Property Directorate in Kosovo and affairs department of the Ministry of the Flemish Community of Belgium (2000- 2001). In 2004, he joined the European Commission. 2007, as a Policy officer in the Civil Protection Unit, he was one of the main drafters of the revision of the European civil protection legislation and became Acting Head of the new unit responsible for disaster response, which includes the EC Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC).

third country nationals. By using the two instruments and building upon their respective strengths, the Commission was able to deliver a fully joined-up and integrated response.

The need to step up European disaster response capacities The challenges posed by the increasing impact of natural and manmade disasters as well as lessons learnt from the most recent emergencies suggest that while the EU disaster response is well-established overall, there is, however, also room for further improvement.

From the nations’ ad hoc offers to a system of pre-planned allocations As of now, for instance, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism is based on ad hoc offers of assistance from Member States. When a country requests assistance, this request is communicated to the Member States via the MIC and offers are subsequently collected. This system makes prior planning of operations difficult because it is not clear which assets will be available. In addition, there is a need for the EU’s civil protection and humanitarian aid instruments to be linked even more closely in order to arrive at greater operational coordination. Also, the central coordinating role of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs could be better supported through a coherent EU contribution to UN-led relief efforts.

The creation of new capabilities for the EU The Commission Communication “Towards a stronger European disaster response: the role of civil protection and humanitarian assistance” of October 2010 presents options to address the shortcomings of the current European disaster response system that were outlined above, while also stressing that better response capacities need to go hand in hand with further efforts in the fields of prevention and preparedness. Most importantly, the Communication suggests the creation of a European Emergency Response Capacity and a European Emergency Response Centre. • EU Emergency Response Capacity The Emergency Response Capacity is envisaged in the form of a pool of pre-identified civil protection assets from states participating in the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. Registration of assets in this pool would be voluntary, but once Member States had agreed to provide assets to the pool, they would be expected to make them available for EU disaster relief operations both inside and outside the EU when called for − except when the assets are needed for domestic emergencies. This system would greatly improve the predictability of the availability of key assets without generating significant extra costs because the assets are already available for national purposes and would remain under national command and control during their deployment in EU operations.

• European Emergency Response Centre The second cornerstone of the Communication, the European Emergency Response Centre, will be established by merging the ECHO and the MIC crisis rooms, i.e. the crisis rooms for humanitarian aid and civil protection within DG ECHO, into one genuine response centre, operational on a 24/7 basis and responsible for the coordination of the EU’s civilian disaster response.

The establishment and role of the new Emergency Response Centre For the new Emergency Response Centre to function effectively, a qualitative shift from information sharing and reacting to emergencies towards a more proactive role of additional planning, monitoring, preparing, operational coordination and logistical support is needed. The centre is envisaged to ensure a continuous exchange of real-time information with both civil protection and humanitarian aid authorities on the needs for assistance and the offers made by the EU Member States and other actors. Both for disasters within and outside the EU, this ensures that the assistance offered is needs-based and arrives in a quick and coherent manner.

Operational coordination with the EEAS and… A consolidated Emergency Response Centre will also facilitate operational coordination with other EU actors, e.g. the geographic departments of the European External Action Service (EEAS) and EU delegations in the field. At the same time, European humanitarian aid does not form part of the EU’s external cooperation with third countries neither in terms of development aid nor in terms of political or economic relations. That is why the new Emergency Response Centre will remain part of DG ECHO and not come under the purview of the EEAS with its political mandate. Protecting the humanitarian principles is of high importance here.

…more efficient coordination within the Commission For disasters in third countries, it is clear that the better the EU organizes itself internally, the easier it can integrate into an overall relief effort, coordinated by the United Nations. The Emergency Response Centre could streamline information flows between the EU and the UN, support the UN cluster system and the UN humanitarian coordinator on-site, and better report on overall financial and in-kind assistance provided by the EU and its Member States, e.g. by combining the two main web-based tools of coordination and reporting thus far, the 14 points system for humanitarian aid and the CECIS system for civil protection. Finally, the Emergency Response Centre of DG ECHO could, over time, be developed into a platform providing support also for other services within the Commission that deal with major disasters.