The European Emergency Number Association (EENA) was somewhat surprised to read the views of Commissioner Mr. Oettinger which were published on Wednesday evening (23 March) in Bild and relayed in Politico, complaining about the lack of cooperation by the police services both within Brussels and within Europe. It also appears that this topic is not in the Commissioner’s portfolio, while another strongly related topic – 112 and emergency services, which includes the police service – is.
EENA would like to remind Mr. Oettinger that with regard to the latter, he, his predecessor and his services have refused to act on several requests from various Ministers of Interior for more cooperation between countries. This includes a complete inaction on the maintenance of a secure database enabling emergency services – including police – to be able to call each other across countries – in simple terms, the emergency services (112) in France do not have the long international phone numbers of the emergency services (112) in Belgium, and vice-versa.
Another abject failure is his decision not to act on the provision of caller location; the emergency services – including police – do not know where the caller is located (accuracy is often with a radius of several kilometres); and some Member States still get the location information after a lengthy delay, often as much as half an hour after the call and via… FAX!
In addition to this, Mr. Oettinger’s services have decided to stand down the work of the Expert Group on Emergency Access (EGEA) which used to gather the emergency services experts – including the police – from all Member States to discuss policy-related matters. EGEA has not met since May 2013.
It is easy to criticise when things go wrong; judging retrospectively has no value for European citizens. We would therefore encourage Mr. Oettinger to refrain from simply passing criticism until the services that he is responsible for do their share and advance on the items that should have progressed years ago. Similar to the national authorities that he is referring to, Mr. Oettinger is a policy and decision-maker and not merely a commentator, so we respectfully ask him to discharge his responsibility in full and make progress towards a safer Europe for our citizens and visitors alike.
Yours Sincerely,
The EENA Team
Useful links:
- Article in politico.eu
- Article in BILD (translated automatically in English)
- COCOM 16-01 – Implementation of the European emergency number 112 – Results of the ninth data-gathering round (page 8 on caller location delivery time)
- COCOM 14-02 – Document putting a stop at the work of EGEA
- Open letter from 60 Members of the European Parliament regarding the functioning of the common European emergency number 112
- Parliamentary question sent by 20 Members of the European Parliament about the lack of reply from Commissioner Mr. Oettinger
- Other documents available upon request