The European Union, countries of the European Economic Area, EU candidate countries and representatives of the European Commission and the Council are holding a video conference on Tuesday on the lessons learned from the health crisis and on ways of strengthening the rescEU initiative, Assistant Interior Minister Damir Trut said.

The video conference was organised as part of Croatia’s presidency of the Council of the EU with 86 delegates from national bodies and civil protection organisations participating to discuss “what they did to prevent the spread of the epidemic in their respective countries and how they assisted each other,” Trut underlined.

One of the priorities discussed is the further development of capacities to protect citizens, preventing and reducing the risk of disaster, as well as developing the rescEU programme which is part of the EU’s civil protection mechanism,” he added.

The Commission is recommending €2 billion more for the rescEU programme in the new European budget which would create a stock of reserve equipment for emergency health situations, wildfires, chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats and other emergency situations.

According to the proposal, the total budget for the EU civil protection mechanism would be €3.1 billion.

Trut recalled that as part of this programme Croatia assists in putting out wildfires with two aircraft when requested either by the Commission or any EU member state and beyond if required.