European Emergency Response Capacity
Article 11
1. A European Emergency Response Capacity (EERC) shall be established. It shall consist of a voluntary pool of pre-committed response capacities of the Member States and include modules, other response capacities and experts. 2. On the basis of identified risks, the Commission shall define the types and the number of key response capacities required for the EERC ("capacity goals"). 3. The Commission shall define quality requirements for the response capacities that Member States commit to the EERC. The quality requirements shall be based on established international standards, where such standards already exist. The Member States shall be responsible for ensuring the quality of their response capacities. 4. The Commission shall establish and manage a process for certification and registration of the response capacities that the Member States make available to the EERC. 5. Member States shall on a voluntary basis identify and register the response capacities which they commit to the EERC. The registration of multinational modules provided by two or more Member States shall be undertaken jointly by all the Member States concerned. 6. The response capacities that Member States make available for the EERC shall remain available for national purposes at all times. 7. Response capacities that Member States make available for the EERC shall be available for response operations under the Union Mechanism following a request for assistance through the ERCC. The ultimate decision on their deployment shall be taken by the Member States which registered the response capacity concerned. When domestic emergencies, force majeure or, in exceptional cases, serious reasons prevent a Member State from making those response capacities available in a specific disaster, that Member State shall inform the Commission as soon as possible by referring to this Article. 8. In the event of deployment, Member States' response capacities shall remain under their command and control and can be withdrawn when domestic emergencies, force majeure or, in exceptional cases, serious reasons prevent a Member State from keeping those response capacities available, in consultation with the Commission. The coordination among the different response capacities shall be facilitated where appropriate by the Commission through the ERCC in accordance with Articles 15 and 16. 9. Member States and the Commission shall ensure an appropriate public awareness of the interventions involving the EERC.