Campus Vesta, Belgium
The European Commission organised today a field exercise in disaster preparedness. “ARETE 2014” simulated a complex chemical and terrorism situation including hostage-taking. It was overseen by Jan Jambon, Vice Prime Minister and the Minister of Interior of Belgium, Christos Stylianides, EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, and Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship.
Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos made the following remarks:
I am particularly pleased to have attended the very successful ARETE 2014 exercise together with my colleague Commissioner Christos Stylianides and to be hosted by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Jan Jambon. Our joint presence here today is a clear sign that we are carrying out our responsibility to ensure the European Union’s resilience to major crises, irrespective of their nature.
The law enforcement and civil protection communities are central to this responsibility. What we witnessed just a few minutes ago is an illustrative example of the importance and necessity of the two communities to work hand in hand. ARETE 2014 has given us the opportunity to understand how we can further strengthen our capabilities and complement each other at the European level.
ARETE 2014 is also a tangible example of how the EU can foster solidarity. The participation of teams from a number of EU countries – France, Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Austria – both from civil protection and law enforcement, demonstrates how EU Member States can be more effective by joining forces.
Europe is confronted with unprecedented threats to its internal security. The foreign fighters’ phenomenon poses a great threat to Europe’s internal security.
This threat is unlikely to decrease in the near future so we need to be ready to respond swiftly and efficiently, in case the exercise scenario that we just witnessed would become a reality.
The European Union needs to provide a manifold response in terms of prevention, protection of critical infrastructure and preparedness.
In today’s interconnected world, an event in one country can also impact many other countries. Of course, terrorism knows no borders and its impact can be far-reaching. For this reason, the Commission has a leading role, together with the Member States, in safeguarding and protecting European Critical Infrastructure.
We are also working to ensure that – if an incident occurs – the disruption to society and the economy is kept to a minimum. To tackle this, we are looking at developing practical tools for improving the protection and resilience of Critical Infrastructures at the European level.
Recent incidents involving chemical, biological, and radiological materials, such as last year’s accidental crash of a train carrying toxic chemicals in Belgium and the chemical attacks against thousands of civilians in Syria, give an alarming indication of the potentially devastating impact of such incidents.
The European Commission has therefore taken concrete steps to urgently improve our understanding of the risks related to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials and to enhance our capacity to detect and mitigate them. In line with the Communication of the Commission on this issue (published in May this year), we will take concrete steps in the areas of prevention, protection, preparedness and response, in coordination with all relevant actors at the EU level and beyond.
One concrete example is to work with law enforcement experts, such as the special intervention forces that you have seen in operation here today, in order to develop better guidance and training tools.
Thank you for your attention and, both Commissioner Stylianides and I, look forward to the next joint exercise which, hopefully, will take place in another neighbourhood of Europe.”