Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-27-Speech-2-039-000"
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"Madam President, thank you very much for the excellent comments and suggestions for the legislative proposal. I shall try to group my answers, starting with what this proposal would do in bringing together a true European capacity.
So, we do have separate roles, we do of course have to coordinate in complex emergencies and, depending on the emergencies, we define exactly how this coordination takes place.
What obstacles do we face from Member States? The critical issue we face is to assure Member States that we are mindful of their legislative conditions, in other words, that we respect how civil protection is organised in each and every one of our Member States, and recognise that in national disasters, where there is no role for the European Union and the country can cope on its own, of course we will not interfere in this response.
Member States in current fiscal conditions and the budgetary environment want to be sure that we will be mindful of cost efficiency. I can give you my word that I am very fiscally prudent and that, yes, we will make sure that every euro of our taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible and most effective manner. In other words, at Community level when it makes sense, and at the country level when it is more appropriate.
I was also asked about how we deal with post-disasters. It is a very critical question to link relief to rehabilitation and development and to make sure that development assistance, including technical capabilities from the European Union, is made available to countries affected by disasters. We have taken some measures in that respect to improve the post-disaster risk assessment that is carried out and then make sure that the European contribution is in this context of internationally coordinated efforts in developing countries. I do agree that this is an area where more work needs to be done, and we have made it a priority with Commissioner Piebalgs for our cooperation.
I very much agree with Ms de Brún that we must respect the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence when we provide humanitarian assistance, including civil protection in-kind assistance in developing countries, especially in areas that are affected not only by disasters, but also by conflicts. This must always be respected and I am grateful to Baroness Ashton for very much supporting this principle of neutrality and independence in humanitarian work.
Speakers including Ms Dăncilă – I apologise if I mispronounced the name – made a point on the Solidarity Fund. We work together with Commissioner Hahn to make a proposal for redefining the Solidarity Fund so that it can act immediately through a pre-funding arrangement in case a country is affected by disasters. Last year, I faced a very uncomfortable situation when floods affected Moldova and Romania. In Moldova, we can provide humanitarian assistance overnight, in Romania we cannot. I am therefore a very strong proponent of making sure that solidarity is expressed right at the time when people need it when a disaster hits.
On the question of GMES, this is a pilot project that is very much on the priority list of the working programme for the Commission. The pilot project is now completed but the Commission intends to support GMES financially to the extent possible in the next multi-year financial framework and, of course, we count on Parliament to support our proposal so that it can be done.
Last but not least, on the forest fire-fighting reserve, this is a pilot project that unfortunately came to an end. We cannot extend it, but we are going to include it in the legislative proposal. Talking about where we have difficulty with Member States, some of our Member States are really not in favour of it so we would need your support in Parliament. It is the right thing to do, we have seen it in the years we have applied it, but we still have some work to do to convince Member States that this funding arrangement has to be continued once the legislative proposal is being done. I apologise for taking so long, but there were very many good questions and I did not want to skip any of them.
Madam Striffler brought up this question first. We also had a question from Madam Grossetête on how this relates to the Barnier report. What we are proposing is to integrate the capabilities of Member States and, in this sense, it is more lexis than substance: where the Barnier report was leading us on to and where we are going to be. In the Barnier report, from which we have adopted a total of 12 proposals, the idea is to integrate the capabilities of Member States but there the approach was more top-down, whereas what we are coming with is bottom-up. I can say with confidence that we have support from Member States for this proposal, especially from Member States where the national requirements are such that the delegation is not even at the level of federal or central government but goes down to regional authorities.
So we will have an integrated capacity, we can call it a force, of Member States’ assets. I want to stress that we are not waiting for the legislative proposal to advance. We have already made significant advancements in integrating the capabilities of Member States. When I took office, we had less than 40 modules registered at European level. I can report today that we have 124 modules registered at European level, plus eight coordination teams. The advancements we have taken are in response to the needs. Just for information, in 2010 alone, we activated our Civil Protection Mechanism 28 times. For reference: in previous years, it would be two, three, four or five times and this year, we already have activated it 11 times and the probability is that there may be more activations.
Let me take a second point that was brought up by many MEPs – Mr Arsenis, Mr Czarnecki and Madam de Brún and, I am sure, others – on the importance of preparedness and prevention. We know that a euro invested in prevention brings four to seven euros in return. Yet, moving ahead with prevention has proven to be difficult in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
We recognise how critically important prevention is. I have just come back from Washington where we in the Commission took the lead, together with the World Bank and the government of Japan, in making this question of preparedness and of prevention a high global priority, and we will continue with structured measures focusing on actions taken in prevention in order to boost this work.
We will come back with additional legislative proposals in this area as we advance in our operational thinking. Of course, forests are a big part in our prevention measures. They matter in floods, they matter in being ready for forest fires, they matter in the ecological system for cities and rural areas. So, Mr Arsenis, you will see forests becoming a big part of our preparedness and prevention work.
But preparedness is also training together, and this is where the Commission has already advanced our role. Just last Friday I was in Poland taking part in a five country preparedness exercise, Carpatex, and I can tell you that bringing our community of civil protection together is paramount in saving lives, and reducing property, and we in the Commission are dedicated to do more of it.
I was asked by Mr Leinen and Mr Seeber how we coordinate with the High Representative and I can give you a very positive report that, on the basis of activations and practice in dealing with crises, we have advanced significantly the institutional arrangements and we have much more clarity in who does what, when and where.
Clearly, inside Europe, the High Representative has no role. Two-thirds of activations of the civil protection last year were inside Europe and there it is a matter of internal EU action. Outside Europe, we act as a first responder bringing civil protection humanitarian aid, whereas the High Representative has a role in political and defence coordination. Of course, in complex crises, the High Representative takes the lead and there we bring our skills and capabilities – this is best practice in our Member States, where civil protection is coordinated. Member States have their own civil protection coordination centres and politics and defence are coordinated. Sometimes, civil protection steps in and sometimes they have no role, depending on the type of crisis. Those of you who watched President Obama of the United States responding to the floods recently will have seen that he did it from the civil protection centre of the United States, but when you watch him, in the case of Bin Laden, he was in the situation room of the United States, in the White House."@en1
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