Emergency services: How the EU's disaster response hub works

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.

Such operations are on the rise. In 2018, the EU's crisis response hub responded to 20 requests for help — but by 2022, that had jumped tenfold to more than 230. Behind the rise: The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and increasingly, natural disasters like forest fires or floods.

How does EU civil protection work?

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.

As soon as member states find themselves facing an emergency event, they can send an alert to activate the crisis tool and detail the equipment or expertise they need. Then, other countries can send offers of help, with Brussels centralizing, coordinating and helping to finance deployments.

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.

Strategic stockpiles: from tents to nuclear decontamination

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.

To avoid a repeat, Brussels started stockpiling more medical gear for the entire EU in 2020, after a broader emergency reserve was set up the previous year. By now, the bloc has built up supplies ranging from medical protective kit to ready-to-go field hospitals. The stockpile, hosted across multiple locations, also includes helicopters, firefighting planes, tents and energy generators.

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.

Plans for EU firefighting planes advance slowly

But this stockpile wish list is growing longer and harder to fulfill, as the impact of climate change makes itself felt across the continent. The EU's Joint Research Center says wildfires have scorched around 260,000 hectares (642,474 acres) of land in the EU this year and caused "massive environmental and economic damage."

With blazes expected to wreak more havoc across the bloc in years to come, Brussels is planning to buy 12 new firefighting aircraft for a first-of-its-kind centrally-financed EU fleet.

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."

Garcia Ferrer said under current plans, the additional aircraft will be in action from 2027.

The limits of emergency cooperation

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.

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.

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. Last year, Lenarcic suggested the bloc should reconsider the setup: "On one hand, we have this treaty," he told news outlet Politico. "On the other hand, we have a growing sense that more Europe is needed in civil protection."

"When and if there is a decision to go for treaty change, I'm sure this should be part of the discussions — how to strengthen the disaster response capacity, including the decision-making capacity on the European level, which we now don't have," he said.

Edited by: Rob Mudge