[ad_1]
The EU pays seventy-five percent of the cost to governments that repatriate their citizens through the EU’s aid mechanism for the coronavirus epidemic. Tens of thousands of EU citizens have returned in this way, it is not rumored, but the Hungarian government, which repatriates the majority of Hungarian citizens stranded abroad, has already used the cost-saving option.
It was slowly created twenty years ago.
In addition to the EU Member States, six countries are members of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (CPM) (Iceland, Norway, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey). It was established in 2001 and since then more than 330 cases of coordinated action have been needed. The essence of CPM is that if an emergency exceeds a country’s response capacity, you can request assistance through this mechanism.
In reality, it is a cooperation based on reciprocity, which can be coordinated well if someone only knows what help they need but is not available to them. In such cases, help can be sought quickly and efficiently at EU headquarters, and targeted at those in need. It should be added that assistance is not limited to cooperating states.
Following a request for assistance through the Mechanism, the Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) will mobilize assistance or experience. The ERCC monitors incidents 24 hours a day and provides emergency assistance in cooperation with national civil protection authorities.
Whether it is special equipment and equipment such as forest firefighting aircraft, search and rescue teams and doctors in Europe or beyond.
Satellite maps produced by Copernicus Emergency Services as part of the former also support civil protection operations. Copernicus provides GIS information that is useful in describing affected areas and planning disaster relief operations.
Any country in the world, but also the United Nations (UN) and its agencies or a relevant international organization, can turn to the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for help. The mechanism has already been implemented for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa (2014) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2018), and the recent devastation of the eastern tropical cyclone in Mozambique (2019), the earthquake in Albania (2019) and Sweden (2018), Bolivia. (2019) or forest fires in Greece (2019).
The coronavirus reinterpreted assistance.
A major challenge for the Civil Protection Mechanism is the coronavirus epidemic. It is not a state or a region that needs coordinated assistance, but rather that each Member State desperately tries to improve its situation, looks for actions in a depleted European market or tries to develop its own production. But whether it’s masks, tests, ventilators, or medications, or even medical and nursing personnel, the demands far outweigh the possibilities.
In principle, EU coordination would be important to get stocks where they are needed, in line with the flattening or sharp rise in the epidemic in each Member State. However, this is made significantly more difficult by the fact that no one is happy to ditch the hard-to-acquire assets and not just pass them on, but acquire new shares of China.
In this situation, the greatest communication benefit was when Romanian and Norwegian medical teams went to Italy under this mechanism, and Austria sent 3,000 liters of disinfectant there. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has repeatedly spoken about the need to direct aid where it is most needed, and has even called on Member States to:
Do not stockpile medications, restrict online shopping, or impose an export ban.
Hungary has decided to do the opposite twice. First, an export ban was imposed on chloroquine and its derivatives (which are also being tested for vaccines) and then on antibiotics, pain relievers, and hypnotics.
Solidarity flights
However, there is a specific area of operation of the Emergency Coordination Center that is without a doubt the largest company in its history to repatriate non-EU Europeans. The system for this is relatively simple. A state decides to launch an aircraft from a non-EU country to its own territory, from which it would otherwise be difficult or impossible to return. The state places its own citizens in one part of the plane, ideally half the passengers and the rest of the seats, with as many EU citizens as possible, to maximize solidarity.
The European Union pays 75% of the operating costs of said flight to that state.
Often it was only a day or two to organize one of those flights, so it’s conceivable how much coordination work it all involved. And not just one or two planes, but by May 8, a total of 269 of those flights had departed, with more than 66,000 people.
We collect relevant data from all flights based on information from the European Commission to provide precise indications of which countries, when and how many flights were launched, what the number of passengers by nationality looked like, even if non-EU citizens were on board. It is also clear which countries used this opportunity in the first place, which were the starting points, or which were those whose own country did not organize a flight, but many of them “boasted” of a plane taking off.
The first plane was launched by France on January 31, unsurprisingly, from the starting point of the epidemic, Wuhan, China, with 180 people on board. Two days later, another French flight arrived from Wuhan, on which there were already Hungarians: seven left the city in quarantine.
A total of 18 EU Member States (Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Latvia, Italy, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia) They have launched planes. Most of the flights were organized by the Germans, so far 156, the French 25, the Spanish 15, and surprisingly many Czechs (13), Belgians (13) and Austrians (10). By implication, German citizens have returned in this way for the most part, we are talking about more than 32 thousand people, followed by the French with almost six thousand people.
452 of the Hungarians took advantage of this opportunity, which is located approximately in the middle field.
Logical correlations were observed in the organization of the trips, for example, the Dutch launched only five flights in this cooperation, but used Belgian or German planes, as the Hungarians and Slovaks generally arrived in Prague on Czech flights and then arrived home much more easily.
Most of them wanted to return from the east, India, Indonesia, Malaysia as soon as possible, and many planes also arrived from southern Africa, Namibia, and South America, Peru. There were also actual airlifts: Germany launched five flights from Denpasar, Indonesia, and seven from Windhoek, Namibia, in late March. Between April 3 and 11, nine to nine planes from New Zealand, Auckland and Christchurch, and from March 22 to April 6 from Costa Rica, also sailed from Germany.
The Hungarian Way
EU Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, sent a letter to all Member States on March 31, reminding them that this option was not changed and asking governments to use it. During this period, there was a declaration of war in Hungary between the government and the opposition, the government said that there was no EU aid in the fight against the epidemic and its effects, and the opposition mentioned, inter alia, this mechanism as tangible. opportunity that should only be requested.
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjrtó on April 3 and online At a press conference, he recalled Lenarčič’s letter as follows:
Earlier this week, we received a letter that Brussels is implementing some form of support mechanism, but the vast majority of European countries have been bringing their citizens home from around the world for almost a month now, so what we are, so this attempt at coordination has been delayed a bit.
Three days later, on April 6, Péter Szijjártó commented in a Facebook post with slightly different content but a similar advantage when he wrote:
On March 31, a letter was received from the European Disaster Commissioner, informing him that, in very serious conditions, a refund could even be made upon his return. Therefore, it took the European Commission a month to change: many hundreds of EU citizens are trapped abroad and hope to help them get home.
According to Péter Szijjártó’s comments, it seems that this was a new attempt, according to the Foreign Minister, despite the fact that the EU had already provided the opportunity to do so before (as we have seen, these aircraft have been in operation since the end of January), not to mention almost twenty years old. The “very serious conditions” mean that citizens of other countries should have been brought home, just as others brought the Hungarians home.
In the meantime,
The Hungarian government spoke of the largest return operation in history,
and brought home thousands of Hungarian citizens mainly on Wizzair’s special planes or flights without using the EU refund option. Of course, this would also have required citizens of other states to travel on the planes as well. Balázs Dzsudzsák, the captain of the Hungarian national soccer team team, also traveled to Hungary with a special plane and a diplomatic passport.
Then on April 17, the ice broke,
Despite criticism, Hungary also joined the program.
The Hungarian government launched a flight from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Pen, for which it then submitted its cost invoice to Brussels. However, this flight was more than interesting. Usually these flights are traditional, large passenger planes, with hundreds of people on board. However, a total of ten passengers sat on the Hungarian plane: five Hungarians, four Slovenes and one Slovak.
On May 7, a Wizzair plane also landed, bringing Hungarian and other passengers from Central Europe from New York, Miami, Toronto and Reykjavik. All of this can be found on the Facebook page of Péter Szijjártó, where the Foreign Minister said that
In the framework of Central European cooperation, we also brought home twenty-one Slovak citizens, four Czechs, four Slovenes and two Austrians.
This flight also appeared in the EU aggregate, meaning that it was not just Central Europe cooperation, but an EU cooperation, where the EU pays three-quarters of the costs. (By the way, there was a US citizen on the plane.)
Photo: FB website of the Hungarian Embassy in Brussels
In addition to the examples above, Hungary prefers bilateral agreements to the EU airlift. One of many examples of this was the return of the majority of the Hungarian military contingent serving in Mali.
At dawn on April 15, a Belgian air force landed at a military airport near Brussels with 15 Hungarian soldiers and three Hungarian civilians. A total of 87 citizens from 14 countries were on board, including Belgians, Americans, Germans, Spanish and Slovenes. The Hungarians were received by Ambassador Iván Kovács and appreciated the help of the Belgian government.
TOGETHER, ACCORDING TO INFORMATION FROM THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 9529 HUNGARIANS HAVE BEEN HOME IN THE LAST MONTHS, 624 HUNGARIAN CITIZENS ARE STILL TRAVELING.
Leave a comment on the EUrologus Facebook page !
The article is from Eurologist and European Network of Data Journalists as a result of cooperation between CC BY-SA 4.0 license According to.
(Cover image: Passengers in Terminal 2A of Liszt Ferenc Airport on March 12, 2020. Photo: MTI / Tamás Kovács)
[ad_2]
