Fresh calls are being made for the creation of a Europe-wide disaster response force to deal with crises like the flooding in Pakistan and the forest fires sweeping Russia. Critics of the current EU mechanisms say they’re inefficient and at the mercy of political whim – but a Dutch MEP told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that replacing them isn’t the solution.

Moscow is covered in a blanket of smog and severe flooding in Romania has killed 20 people this week. In Pakistan up to 3.5 million people have been affected by the heaviest rainfall in years and China is also dealing with massive landslides.

Nothing new
In 2006, the former European Commissioner Michel Barnier outlined a proposal for a European crisis management fund to be called ‘Europe Aid’ but the proposal has yet to be implemented.

MEP Thijs Bermans, who sits on the EU Commission for Development Aid, said the union is working on improving aid coordination, but that it’s problematic because setting up a community-wide force is dependent on the member states’ national security spending:

“Often, these kind of disaster problems are closely linked with military efforts, and if any domain is national it’s the military. And they are very, very reluctant to speed up the process of better coordination, let alone speak about the European Aid force that Michel Barnier was calling for.”

Different disaster teams
The EU currently has a number of bodies set up to deal with disasters including the European Commission on Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO) - which doles out around 700 million euros a year to aid organisations – and the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection which helps EU countries coordinate bilateral responses.

The Community Mechanism hasn’t been implemented to deal with Russia’s fires because Moscow insists its capable of handling the situation by itself. This kind of national pride is often a factor in whether countries accept outside aid, says James Darcy from the UK-based Overseas Development:

“In this case I can understand why Russia was less than keen to accept assistance because it is, for many states it’s a mark of a kind of reasonably well-developed state that it can look after its own people. So there is a bit of this ‘we don’t need your help, thank you very much.’”

Change on the way
Dr Joost Herman, director of the University of Groningen’s Humanitarian Action Programme, says the situation will improve when the EU gets to grips with changes introduced by the Lisbon treaty, which altered the remit of the ECHO.

Under changes currently being worked into the system, ECHO will have greater control over its own purse strings, and won’t simply hand out cash to other organisations over which it has no control. Most importantly, ECHO will employ its own team of experts to travel to crisis areas, and establish the so-called Volunteer Humanitarian aid corps.

“They’re doing a good job according to their job description – they have limited staff, they have representatives around the world, field officers and staff in Brussels and it’s their job whenever a crisis erupts, to bring their field officers with their bags of money into contact with humanitarian organisations to make them work.

“They’re indeed heading towards having their own reservoir of executive people who can actually work in crisis situations. So it’s in the oven but it’s not yet fully implemented.”