Deadly floods in Slovenia, fires in Italy and Greece and heatwaves in Spain: the European Union experienced many natural disasters this summer. The EU’s emergency coordination and response center in Brussels operates 24 hours a day – linking individual state agencies, coordinating the deployment of rescue teams and trying to predict the next natural disaster.

The EU Commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic announced that Germany and France are sending prefabricated bridges, excavators and teams of engineers to Slovenia after the floods, while Greece is sending Canadair jets to help Cyprus deal with the fires. Late last week it announced that nine European countries were under “extreme” fire risk, five were on flood alert and two were bracing for high temperatures or rain.

In 2018, the EU’s crisis response mechanism responded to 20 requests for help, but by 2022 this number will exceed 230. This increase is due to several factors: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and natural disasters such as forest fires or floods.

How does EU civil protection work?

Lenarcic oversees the Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism – which was set up in 2001 to manage crises and coordinate transnational cooperation in the fight against natural disasters. Once member states are faced with an emergency, they can send a notification and specify the help they need, with Brussels aggregating, coordinating and helping fund the activities.

The 27 countries of the EU, as well as 9 neighboring states, such as Turkey, Ukraine and Norway, participate in the mechanism, but other countries can also request assistance. Earlier this year, for example, Canada drafted in European firefighters to put out forest fires, while last year water purification teams and doctors were sent to Pakistan, which was facing devastating floods.

Also, the pandemic woke up the European Union: there was a shortage of respirators and masks and state machinery was not ready, while the restriction of flights made it difficult to supply medicine. To avoid something similar in the future, Brussels is now stockpiling more medical equipment for the entire EU, an emergency stockpile. So far, the Association has gathered a variety of supplies, from first aid kits, to helicopters, firefighting planes, tents and power generators. In addition, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brussels stepped up efforts to stockpile disinfection equipment and iodine tablets in case of a chemical or nuclear disaster.

Designs for European firefighting planes

But climate change is changing the situation in Europe. The EU Joint Research Center it says that this year the fires have burned about 260,000 hectares of land, causing “enormous environmental and economic damage”. As fires are expected to cause more destruction in the coming years, Brussels plans to buy 12 new firefighting aircraft, the first of the EU’s centrally funded fleet.

But these additional aircraft will not be available immediately. “Building up our own fleet takes time, given that global production of some types of firefighting aircraft has been halted,” European Commission spokeswoman Miriam García Ferrer said recently. “We need medium amphibious firefighting aircraft to deal with the serious problems that arise, but the market supply of such aircraft is limited.” Hence the first aircraft of this type will be ready in 2027.

The limits of emergency cooperation

European Commissioner Lenarcic praises the firefighters, engineers and doctors who respond to emergencies outside their borders: “The solidarity of the EU at her best,” he wrote in an online post. But the civil protection mechanism of the E.U. is only voluntary: the members of the E.U. they can choose whether to help other states in need and often do so, but are not obliged to do so. The E.U. it has no legal powers to make decisions about disaster response and needs the go-ahead from member states to buy emergency back-up supplies.

Such a change would require a redrafting of the Union’s founding treaties, which national governments tend to be generally wary of, fearing they would hand over more powers to Brussels. According to Lenarcic, “whenever there is a decision to change the treaty, it should be discussed how to strengthen the capacity to deal with disasters, including the decision-making capacity at the European level, which is not happening now.”