Rebecca Taylor, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – Madam President, the Union’s civil protection mechanism is designed to coordinate relief efforts between Member States in response to requests for assistance. When a Member State is overwhelmed by an emergency – like floods, earthquakes, forest fires – a request for assistance is sent to the Commission’s emergency response centre, which then circulates the request and receives offers of assistance from other Member States and international organisations.

Thankfully, until now, my own country, the United Kingdom, has not needed to call on such assistance, but it has made inquiries, and the opportunity to use this EU assistance is welcomed should it arise in future. Recent weather patterns – particularly, in my region, including increased flooding – suggest that day might unfortunately not be too far away. Only last Thursday, Hull, the city in my constituency where my office is situated, was flooded.

The role of the UK as a contributor of assistance to other Member States and international humanitarian operations means I can clearly see the value of the coordination role of the civil protection mechanism. It allows for efficiency savings and can, hopefully, prevent chaos on the ground where lots of people are trying to do different things at the same time. The improvements negotiated, including increased preparedness planning and the voluntary pooling of civil protection assets, will make for better EU assistance in this area.

A number of problems arose, but in the negotiations we managed to avoid these by: keeping financing levels to a point where moral hazard is avoided; allowing Member States to keep national security information out of preparedness planning documents that are shared with the Commission and other Member States; and making sure that Member States can withdraw from voluntary pools if they themselves are hit by a domestic emergency. The Liberal Group, and Parliament as a whole, should be happy to vote for this legislation.