Since its creation in 1999, EENA has driven advocacy actions to improve the way emergency communications are handled in Europe. This has involved interacting with EU decision-makers and other stakeholders, running campaigns, sharing expertise and knowledge.

Table of contents
  • What drive us
  • Our activities
  • Legislation
  • Supporters

What drives us?

Our mission is to improve the safety and the security of the people.

Our vision is that every citizen can access emergency services and receive the appropriate information and care during an emergency or a disaster. To that end, we want to be the organisation in the sector driving change.

What we do, we do it for the people we serve, and we never forget it. We intend to be a highly effective, efficient, and fast-moving organisation, trusted and credible for our actions, intentions, and results.

We want the people working for and with us to be inspired to drive change, and to effectively do it. We want anyone in this field to know that they can rely on us, we want them to feel that they are part of a community that looks forward and gets things done. We don’t settle for anything less than excellence in what we do.

More information about EENA’s creation, mission & values here.

What does EENA believe in?​

The quality of emergency services is life-saving. For example, time spent for a citizen in distress to reach an emergency services operator and for emergency services to locate people in distress can be crucial for the wellbeing of citizens. What would happen if a citizen of a member state called 112 in another state? How easy is it for a person with a disability to contact emergency services? How can we use modern technology for the safety of citizens? These, and many others, are issues that lie at the core of EENA’s work.

In a crisis, whether natural or man-made, citizens should receive information as to what behaviour they need to adopt. This should take place in two ways: firstly, education about the subject should be provided in a preventive manner; secondly, in the case of an upcoming emergency that can be predicted, authorities need to have mechanisms to provide citizens with all necessary information as to how they should behave to minimize risks.

With an increasingly growing number of Europeans traveling across Europe, knowledge of the single European emergency number becomes of fundamental importance. Awareness is improving but remains far from being the norm around EU citizens. Moreover, large disparities between member states show that Europe has a long way to go.

Transparency

We advocate transparency, and we put it into practice every day by telling what we do. We have nothing to hide, and we don’t hide anything.  We are registered in the EU transparency register (see here), which we believe should be mandatory. Therefore, the page below details the recent position papers we have published and consultations we have responded to.

Our Activities

Recent achievements

Other topics EENA is working on revolve around accessibility for people with disabilities, transnational emergency calls, direct access to emergency services and promotion of 112.

EENA’s main objective for the new legislature is to ensure a good implementation of the European Electronic Communications Code, which entered into force in December 2018. This involves assisting national authorities in transposing the provisions of the Code and helping EU decision-makers to identify the remaining issues to be addressed in other legislations.

EENA will follow the legislative developments on digital networks. It is crucial to ensure a seamless transition to newer generations of digital networks and that emergency services also benefit from the digital transformation. Hence, EENA will remain an active actor in the debates on electronic communications networks and universal service obligations. In addition, EENA also carefully follows other relevant legislative developments affecting emergency communications.

–   2014 / EENA Position Paper on the use of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to determine caller location in the context of 112 emergency calls

–  2011 / EENA’s position on NOVES – Non-Voice Emergency Services

– 2010 / EENA Position Paper on the provision of mobile caller-location information in the context of calls to the European emergency number 112

legislation

Supporters of the cause

  • Pascal Arimont, Belgium
  • Benoit Cassart, Belgium
  • Estelle Ceulemans, Belgium
  • Olivier Chastel, Belgium
  • Assita Kanko, Belgium
  • Kristian Vigenin, Bulgaria
  • Tomislav Sokol, Croatia
  • Željana Zovko, Croatia
  • Mika Aaltola, Finland
  • Merja Kyllönen, Finland
  • Grégory Allione, France
  • Aleksandar Nikolaou-Alavanos, France
  • Anthony Smith, France
  • Katrin Langensiepen, Germany
  • Norbert Lins, Germany
  • Sebastian Everding, Germany
  • Peter Liese, Germany
  • Christine Schneider, Germany
  • Tiemo Wölken, Germany
  • Sakis Arnaoutoglou, Greece
  • Pál Szekeres, Hungary
  • Marco Tarquinio, Italy
  • Seán Kelly, Ireland
  • Maria Walsh, Ireland
  • Aurelijus Veryga, Lithuania
  • Daniel Attard, Malta
  • Sebastião Bugalho, Portugal
  • Catarina Martín Frías, Portugal
  • Paulo Do Nascimento Cabral, Portugal
  • André Rodrigues, Portugal
  • Bogdan Andrzej Zdrojewski, Poland
  • Matjaž Nemec, Slovenia
 

Parliamentary Questions are a procedure by which Members of the European Parliament can ask a question to the European Commission. This document lists all the parliamentary questions related to emergency communications since 2010.