One single toll-free hotline all over Europe, to notify any emergency: it is 112. Launched in 1991, the service has become more and more important over the last ten years. The EU Commission presented in Brussels the website www.ec.europa.eu/112 which "will explain to the citizens how to use 112 and how it can help them, especially when they travel across the EU". Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Telecommunication, explains: "This summer, the millions of Europeans who will go on holidays will need to remember just one emergency number, 112. Now it is working all over the EU, except one country", Bulgaria, "I ask the member states to make it known and promote its use". The purpose of 112 is to put citizens in need in direct contact with an emergency centre, a police station or a medical first-aid post. According to the Commission’s statistics, "97% of the calls are answered within 20 seconds in the Czech Republic, in Spain and in the United Kingdom, and at least 71% within 10 seconds in the Netherlands and in Finland". In other states, such service is slower, but improving. Seventeen countries have said they can answer 112 calls in the EU’s foreign languages: the most commonly spoken language is English.
