Georgieva wants binding crisis-response pledges

Commission should use EU funds for equipment.

Member states’ pledges of civil protection equipment will become binding under legislation being put forward by Kristalina Georgieva, the European commissioner for crisis response. 

Georgieva is also seeking the authority to use European Union funds to purchase such equipment in cases where it is not made available by the member states, in draft legislation adopted by the European Commission yesterday (20 December). “We have to invest in preparedness and prevention and we have to bring together our capacity to respond in a much more effective manner,” Georgieva said.

“What we propose in the legislation is, first, to do a careful analysis of what we have, what we don’t have, what are the gaps and how can they be funded,” Georgieva said, “and then on the basis of this make the next decision, [on whether] we need to hold some assets at community level.” She said that these assets were expected to be in the area of biological, chemical and nuclear technology, where disasters are highly unlikely but very costly when they do occur.

Georgieva is also seeking to raise the EU co-financing available for transporting national crisis teams to disaster areas, which is currently limited to 50%. In exceptional circumstances, the Commission could finance transport costs in their entirety.

Voluntary contributions

Currently, the Commission relies on voluntary contributions from member states, and the EU does not hold any disaster-response equipment of its own. Georgieva said that the creation of an EU civil protection corps was not realistic in current conditions.

The draft legislation, which requires the approval of national governments and MEPs, is Georgieva’s first legislative proposal since becoming European commissioner for international co-operation, humanitarian aid and crisis response in February 2010. “It is absolutely clear that the world has changed,” she told European Voice. “We don’t focus enough on a very significant change – the increased frequency and intensity of disasters on a planet that is much more densely populated, and with a population that is more concentrated in cities with substantially more material wealth at risk.”

Japan’s tsunami

Fact File

Emergency funding for 2012

The European Commission on Friday (16 December) announced its allocation of €640 million in humanitarian funding for next year. Following a global needs assessment, the Commission allocated €102m to the Horn of Africa, €87m to north and south Sudan, and €40m-€45m each to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel region and Palestine. More than half the allocated funding goes to sub-Saharan Africa. This year, the Commission spent €1.1 billion on humanitarian aid, roughly half of it in emergency funding decisions.

Georgieva said that this year’s tsunami in Japan, which knocked out the Fukushima nuclear-power plant, was the most expensive disaster in history, accounting for close to half the more than €500 billion in damage recorded globally in 2011. “The moral of 2011 is, first, there is a growing share of the world’s population that is highly vulnerable to shocks and these shocks are more dramatic, and second, no one is protected,” she said. “Even the best-prepared country on the planet, Japan, was brought to its knees.”

The proposed legislation concerns the EU’s disaster response both inside the EU and abroad. Georgieva said that investment in disaster prevention and preparedness was “an obligation to our citizens” at a time of shrinking government budgets, citing research by the World Bank suggesting that every euro invested in preparedness generates between four to seven euros in savings.

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