Cross-border pilot projects

Fighting cross-border natural disasters

Natural disasters within Europe are more often a recurring emergency, with a significant cost in terms damage to the environment, infrastructure, the economy and sadly sometimes claiming human lives. This calls for action at European level, in order to enhance preparedness and response to such situations, mitigating possible losses.

The European Commission is dedicated to taking up the challenge to protect European citizens from such natural disasters. The 6 projects it has approved on cross border civil protection cooperation to fight natural disaster are aimed at raising awareness and providing a framework for closer cooperation in civil protection in the fields of cross border early warning, coordination and logistical tools with a view to preventing or at least minimising the consequences of natural disasters.

Call for Proposals

In 2006, the European Parliament extraordinarily allocated a sum of money following the spate of cross-border natural disasters hitting Europe to develop projects with a view to further a number of reports and resolutions from the EP on the need to fight against natural disasters. Furthermore they are in line with the proposal of the European Commission to strengthen the recast Community civil protection mechanism, presented on 26.1.2006 (COM(2006)29 final).

Approved projects

Following the call for proposals, 6 projects were approved, which will receive €5.6 million euros of funding. These projects are aimed at raising awareness and providing a framework for closer cooperation in civil protection in the fields of cross border early warning, coordination and logistical tools with a view to preventing or at least minimising the consequences of natural disasters.  

The 6 projects are led by 5 different Member States (Germany, France, Italy, Latvia and the United Kingdom), with partners from 18 different Member States. The projects will develop and test civil protection multinational modules in the field of response, urban and marine search and rescue and command in emergency interventions, focusing on the main natural disasters that have been affecting Europe during the last few years' namely forest fires, earthquakes, floods (both fluvial  and coastal).

The projects are intended to test innovative approaches in the field of civil protection by developing operational cross border civil protection modules. Modules are specific, predefined arrangements of Member States' civil protection resources, consisting of equipment, personnel or a combination thereof. Their goal is to either perform support functions or to meet priority needs arising from emergencies. They should be fully interoperable, rapidly deployable and equipped.

The selected projects receiving Community funding are the following: