The famous Manneken-Pis statue is donning the European Union (EU) Civil Protection uniform on Friday morning.
This symbolic act aims to raise awareness of the significance of European civil protection and its workers, as emergency situations and crises increase globally and within Europe, according to a press release from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO).
In Belgium, the EU’s civil protection mechanism has already been activated four times.
Disaster-stricken countries, whether from natural or human origins, often find the scale of the disaster overwhelming, thereby limiting their response capacity. This is why the EU’s civil protection mechanism was created in 2001. Besides EU Member States, third countries such as Ukraine and Turkey also participate.
The mechanism incorporates preventive measures aimed at reducing the impact of disasters, as well as providing "rapid, effective and coordinated" aid to populations, available at the European Council’s website.
This can range from search and rescue operations, dealing with urban fire and forest fires, water purification, deploying medical staff to repatriating EU citizens.
The EU’s civil protection mechanism has been activated more than 700 times within and outside the EU since its inception, including four times in Belgium between 2020 and 2022, an EU Commission press attaché reported.
It was deployed to repatriate citizens during the health crisis, and in July 2021, to handle severe flooding – primarily in the Liège province – following a national call for assistance.
In response, a rescue team and helicopter were mobilised from France. Italy and Austria also intervened. Additionally, it was activated in 2021 during the crisis in Afghanistan for the repatriation of citizens, and later for managing the influx of refugees from Ukraine.
In Europe, the number of activates recorded between 2020 and 2022 is the highest in the mechanism’s history. In fact, it was deployed 260 times due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The aid provided included donations of protective equipment, medical teams, vaccines, cross-border patient care and the repatriation of EU citizens stranded in other countries.
