Goal 4 - Respond
Enhancing the Union Civil Protection Mechanism response capacity.
In a crisis situation, the emergency services capacity of a country can become overwhelmed. In these cases, EU response assets and teams can intervene to fill critical national gaps and avoid a further deterioration of the situation, by mobilising EU capacities from rescEU: the EU’s strategic reserve. As disasters are evolving in complexity, the UCPM must accordingly evolve by reinforcing its response capacities. The Respond disaster resilience goal sets concrete targets to strengthen the EU’s ability to respond to a request for assistance under the Union Mechanism.
Flagship initiative:
To scale up the rescEU strategic reserve.
This includes a doubling of rescEU’s aerial firefighting fleet by 2023, with an additional 2 helicopters and 14 light aircraft. The objective of this initiative is to continuously build up the rescEU reserve in cooperation with Member States, and to regularly review overall capacity at the European level.
