In India, mobilization of the EU "civil protection" mechanism

(BRUSSELS2) Following the terrorist attacks in Bombay in India, the community civil protection mechanism was activated, notably allowing certain EU Member States (France and Sweden), having dispatched a plane to India, to evacuate wounded from other nationalities (United Kingdom and Spain), specified the European Commission in a press release.

A Swedish plane. Thus an SAS plane and the medical team of the Swedish emergency services agency, made available by Sweden, made it possible to evacuate on Monday to London, five wounded, including two seriously injured and one suffering from psychological trauma. . The Swedish plan was mobilized over the weekend, in collaboration with two experts (from France and Sweden) hired by the Community Civil Protection Mechanism to help coordinate the operation. Commission officials from the EC Delegation in India facilitated cooperation between member states' consulates in Mumbai to help identify European citizens who need medical evacuation. And medical evacuation costs were co-financed by the community budget, according to the terms of an arrangement concluded in 2007.

And a French plane. As for the plane chartered by the French government, it repatriated to Paris on Saturday 77 survivors, including 29 French, 19 Italians, 17 Spaniards, 5 Germans, a Pole, a Greek, a Dutchman, a Swiss, as well as a Kazakh, an Algerian and a Congolese (for a more detailed report of the French operation). It should be noted that Austria and Greece had also made an offer of means, which were not useful afterwards.

Good but can do better? Nevertheless - I reiterate my previous position... - this mechanism is far from sufficient. It allows the transmission of information between States but not a real "crisis regulation" and especially the necessary anticipation. Some Member States seemed, in fact, still reluctant – before the Indian crisis – to approve the common concept of evacuation of citizens European Unions, resorting to military means if necessary, prepared by the European Union Military Staff. That is to say, to determine – geographical area by geographical area – the available means of evacuation that each State can implement, and possibly the “framework nation” responsible for carrying out the operation.

The principle of a reinforcement approved at the European Summit? Hervé Morin, the French Defense Minister, recalled this on Tuesday before the MEPs of the Foreign Affairs Committee
of the European Parliament: "It is not a question of creating a new structure. But of coordinating the national crisis centres, the transport, the exchange and information of the national plans; and of having an evacuation planning: a point of contact by country and one pilot country per area concerned." The French presidency thus hopes to succeed in having the principle of such a plan approved at the next European summit...