rescEU IT Proper

ongoing

Due to the climate change, Europe is more and more exposed to forest and vegetal fires of large dimension spreading all over the Continent not only during the forest fire season. It is a matter of fact that the most effective tools to fight such disasters were developed by the countries more prone to this type of hazard. The experience shows that those countries may not be able to intervene in support of other States in case of emergency because often the internal situation requires to use all the assets available to respond to a national emergency. In case of critical situation in more than one country, the Union Civil Protection Mechanism is relaying on spontaneous offers of aerial means and on the ones pre-committed to the European Civil Protection Pool. Those resources have proven to be insufficient, for this reason in ordered to fill the identified gap rescEU transition and now rescEU Proper were estab-lished. The management of all those resources require coordination, DG ECHO thanks to its man-date and available IT tools can play this role. It has the complete and comprehensive view of what happens in the Countries affected by fires and therefore can assess what the best use of the available resources. It is crucial to ensure to UCPM and the coordination of DG ECHO the adequate number of aerial assets to cope with simultaneous forest fires. In order to respond to this need the Member States have agreed to include in rescEU aerial forest fires fighting airplanes designed according to the outcomes of the working group dedicated to this risk sector and able to carry out the most frequently requested missions in the shortest time as possible. Following UCPM-2022-rescEU-Capacities-AFFF-IBA call Italy received funding to procure two aircraft (medium) and to ensure their availability in rescEU.