The EU's disaster response hub has had a lot on its plate recently, with floods, wildfires and the pandemic. How does this body work?
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. Grounded flights and border closures meant many of Europe's usual channels for sourcing equipment and medicine — especially from China — were blocked or slowed.
After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Brussels also sped up efforts to stockpile decontamination equipment and iodine tablets in case of a chemical or nuclear disaster.Image: Stamos Prousalis/REUTERSBut this stockpile wish list is growing longer and harder to fulfill, as the impact of climate change makes itself felt across the continent.
But these additional aircraft won't be available right away."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."The market has been limited in offering new medium amphibious firefighting planes which are the ones we need to tackle the serious problems we are facing.
But that solidarity can only go so far. That's because the EU's civil protection mechanism is only voluntary: EU members can choose to help other states in need and often do — but they are not obliged. The EU does not have legal powers to make decisions about disaster response and it needs member states' green light to buy emergency reserve supplies.