As Europe faces increasingly complex disasters, DG ECHO’s A4 Unit – rescEU Assets Team – has published ‘rescEU: Preparing Europe for Increasingly Complex Disasters’, a new publication showcasing Europe’s strategic reserve of emergency response capacities and its role in strengthening collective preparedness and response.
The EU set up rescEU in 2019 as the final layer of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. It steps in when national resources and offers from other countries are not enough. The EU finances the capacities in full, and 24 countries host them. The Emergency Response Coordination Centre in Brussels coordinates each deployment.
The reserve has been deployed more than 300 times. Between January and August 2026 alone, 66 deployments supported 11 countries. The publication gives each capacity its own section, from aerial firefighting and medical evacuation to emergency shelter, power generation and CBRN response. Each one explains the gap the capacity fills and gives recent examples, including support to Ukraine since 2022.
A final chapter looks at how the reserve will be assessed and adapted for the next EU budget period, 2028–2034.
Full publication can be downloaded here.