Two EC communications on DRR adopted

The European Commission adopted two Communications related to disasters on 23 February 2009 :

• a Community approach to reducing the impact of natural and man-made disasters within the EU: and
• a strategy for supporting disaster risk reduction in developing countries:

The Communications, adopted as a package, represent a first attempt to establish a more strategic approach.

Proposed action at Community level focuses on areas where a common approach is more effective than separate national approaches, such as developing knowledge, linking actors and policies, and improving the performance of existing Community disaster prevention instruments.

With regard to developing countries, the Commission is setting out an EU strategy to help reduce the impact of natural disasters on countries considered to be high-risk. Both Communications contribute to the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for action 2005-2015, adopted at the world conference on disaster reduction.

Full press release

Brief background

The European Commission has increasingly focused on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) related issues, which has been reflected in a series of policy initiatives during 2007-08. 

On the intra-community side, DG Environment launched in March 2008 the Communication on "Community Strategy for the prevention of Natural and Manmade Disaster" (within the EU).

Meanwhile DG Development initiated the process of writing a Communication on "Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries". The Red Cross/EU Office has been closely involved in this process and it developed different comments on the first outline for the Communication (Issues Paper) in May 2008.  The comments were developed jointly with the DRR Unit of the IFRC, the RC/RC Climate Centre, as well as the DRR Working Group of the European Red Cross Societies. The first draft of the Communication was developed in June 2008 and Red Cross/EU Office provided additional comments to this with good assistance from the Federation. The majority our comments were included.