The Official Journal of the European Union published on 7 September 2010 Commission's Decision amending the rules for the implementation of the Community civil protection mechanism. This amendment introduces measures which are needed at Union and participating state levels to enhance the interoperability of civil protection modules, notably regarding training and exercises.

The amendments introduced by the Commission affect Decision 2004/277/EC, Euratom regarding the rules for the implementation of Council Decision 2007/779/EC, Euratom establishing a Community civil protection mechanism to facilitate reinforced cooperation in civil protection assistance intervention. These rules cover the main characteristics of civil protection modules such as their tasks, capacities, components, and deployment time, and define their appropriate degree of self-sufficiency and interoperability.

Recent civil protection operations proved the need to add and implement four new types of civil protection modules to reinforce the civil protection rapid response capability, namely ‘Ground forest firefighting’, ‘Ground forest firefighting using vehicles’, ‘Flood containment’ and ‘Flood rescue using boats’ modules.

Response capacity of European civil protection modules in major emergencies

The Commission points out in its Decision that for civil protection modules to be able to contribute to responding to major emergencies, their main characteristics should meet certain general requirements. This means that civil protection modules should be capable of working self-sufficiently for a given period of time. It is therefore necessary to define general requirements for self-sufficiency and, where appropriate, specific requirements that may vary in function of the type of intervention or the type of module concerned.

For that purpose common practice of Member States and of international organisations should be taken into account, such as extended self-sufficiency periods for urban search and rescue modules or the sharing of tasks between the offering and the requesting country for supporting the operation of modules having an aerial component.

These amendments, which aim to improve the response capacity of Community Civil Protection Mechanism, are part of the whole proceedings of the Commission in the field of Community action to emergencies which, although having demonstrated its operational capacity in many occasions, might be further strengthened with measures such as the creation of an operational center for emergency response.