In the Meuse-Rhine Euregion, the competences in the field of disaster and crisis management are vested at different levels in each country. In Belgium this is a task of the national government, in the Netherlands and Germany this is at regional level. Nevertheless, EMRIC has succeeded in making sound operational agreements for cross-border assistance in the event of disasters and major accidents. These agreements are the result of international treaties between the three countries to whose territory the Meuse-Rhine Euregion belongs. In addition, agreements have been concluded directly between the partners collaborating in EMRIC.
Disasters and major accidents require the deployment of many people and resources. And when you need all the help you can get, you get it from neighboring regions. In the border-rich Euregio Meuse-Rhine, those neighbors are often foreign neighbors. That is why agreements have been made within EMRIC about mutual assistance in the event of large-scale incidents. These agreements are described in the so-called Eumed and Emric plans. Emergency medical assistance is arranged in Eumed. In the Emric plan, fire services, technical assistance and assistance with CBRN incidents (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents).
When needed, help is requested from the neighboring dispatch center(s) using keywords that can be pronounced and understood in the three languages of the Meuse-Rhine Euregion. The plans also stipulate where the foreign emergency services will be sent, who will take on coordination on the incident site and how the deployment will proceed. For Eumed it also stipulates that it is known to which hospitals the patients can be transported and how the patient registration is organized.
In the event of disasters, major accidents and crises, the exchange of information is also very important. For this purpose, specific agreements have been made in the plan for Euregional information exchange. An initial notification is made via the control rooms' web application. The services can then follow the incident on the national or local crisis management systems (LCMS, Paragon).
The Crisis Management and Disaster Response (C&R) focus group discusses the above mentioned and new topics such as risk communication, crisis communication, making a joint risk assessment, and joint evaluation after an incident involving several EMRIC partners. Additional agreements are made if necessary.