Commission staff working document

Climate change is expected to increase the likelihood of extreme weather events occurring at a shorter interval in the future. Other emergencies with cross-border effects could result from natural and technological disasters, acts of terrorism including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism, and technological, radiological or environmental accidents as well as health threats from communicable and non-communicable diseases. Emergencies and major hazards notwithstanding the Baltic Sea region also bear great cost in the form of everyday accidents that cause mortality, morbidity and disability. Within the region, there are huge disparities in mortality caused by everyday accidents depending on the country, region, vulnerable group and environment. Injuries caused by everyday accidents do not ‘just happen’, rather, something in the behavioural cultures, physical environments or health systems affect considerably the number of injuries and their consequences and thus they are preventable.

More efficient mutual assistance and continued Baltic Sea cooperation on prevention, preparedness and response in the field of civil protection can contribute to improving the capabilities of the Member States to address cross-border hazards or emergencies in the region as well as improving the safety of their citizens in local communities. It is also important to mobilise all the forces of the societies to raise awareness of the public for instance an initiative such as APELL (Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at the Local Level) that together with other similar bottom-up processes, this should be fully applied to the Baltic Sea region. This experience could also serve as a model for capacity building in other macro-regions.

Work in this priority area is to be transparent, open, and build on existing achievements of civil protection cooperation in the Baltic Sea region. In that spirit, the CBSS Civil Protection Expert Network provides expert knowledge. Taking into account recommendations of the CBSS Civil Protection Network, an international and representative Advisory Group has been established, in order to provide support and guidance to the priority area coordinator. This group is open ‘to other partners, including representatives of third countries, willing to contribute to the work of the Advisory Group’. In addition, the coordinators of this priority area will seek cooperation with those of other priority areas and horizontal actions, notably priority area ‘Safe’ which has many common issues that can be explored as well as priority areas ‘Agri’ and ‘Health’ and horizontal actions ‘Spatial planning’, ‘Neighbours’, ‘Involve’ and ‘Sustainable development’. Other connections will also be made to exchange ideas and best practices between projects from different priority areas.

A comprehensive system for the design, the monitoring and the follow-up of indicators and targets will be set up in 2013, under the responsibility of the priority area coordinators. The still missing targets and deadline, baseline, and statistics/information sources related to the below indicators will be defined.