EU in briefs" "
Civil defence is a field in which decisions are normally taken at the national level. In many member states of the European Union, competence for civil defence is even devolved to the Regions and to the local authorities. Recent climatic changes are at the origin of a series of disasters of a nature and scale such as to make it indispensable to promote a role of civil defence and emergency intervention coordinated at the European level; they also reopen the debate on the need to reinforce EU fire-fighting structures and other EU measures to counter natural disasters. At the present time there are two programmes of the Commission that finance projects in the field of civil defence, with an overall annual budget of approximately 2.5 million euros. The proposal to beef up EU fire-fighting and anti-disaster structures was made by Commissioner Barnier and could lead to the establishment of a specialised EU body. The current Italian Presidency of the EU has also expressed its support for the proposal: in particular, the Regional Opportunities Project of the European Council aims to promote an integrated project between the European Regions to set up a coordinated rapid reaction force for emergency intervention in earthquakes and other emergencies in which the action of individual national civil defence organizations has been shown to be inadequate or inefficient.
