The tragedy of the tsunami in South-East Asia has urgently placed back on the agenda of the EU the possible establishment of “EU civil protection teams” for the management of humanitarian emergencies. The issue had been under review in Brussels for several years, but had never reached the stage of the definition of an operational strategy, in spite of the existence of some pilot projects in this field. The involvement of the Union in operations of humanitarian aid to the Asian population struck by the disaster has now convinced the EU authorities (in particular the Commissioner for external relations and the Commissioner for the environment) of the need to set up a task force to formulate a system of European civil protection, which depending on type of emergency and location of the interventions would use the specific resources of various departments headed by the individual EU governments with a view to coordinating the measures and avoiding the duplication or overlapping of aid.
