The Crisis Coordination Arrangements (CCA)

Abstract

Major disasters and emergencies that occur within or outside the borders of the EU is, as mentioned earlier in this book, an important driving force for the Member States to deepen or broaden their cooperation within the field of crisis management. The 9/11 2001 attack in the USA made it clear to the Member States that the EU was lacking a crisis management arrangement for cross-sector coordination on a strategic and high political level. The process to create such an arrangement was initiated in 2004 by the European Council, which invited the Commission and the Council of the European Union (the Council) to establish an integrated EU arrangement for crisis management with cross-border effects to be implemented at the latest by 1 July 2006.¹ The European Council's invitation was followed by a declaration by the Justice and Home Affairs Council in July 2005, soon after the London bombings, that called for the development of: “… arrangements to share information, ensure coordination and enable collective decision-making in an emergency, particularly for terrorist attacks on more than one Member State”.²

In the light of these circumstances, and in the light of the tsunami disaster of 2004/2005, a specific arrangement for strategic crisis management on a high political level was presented under the British Presidency in the fall of 2005. The arrangement, called Crisis Coordination Arrangements (CCA), was formally agreed by the Justice and Home Affairs Council in December 2005 and was officially put into use in July 2006, even if all the details concerning the arrangements were still not entirely in place.³ Even today, the CCA can still consider to be in a formative implementation phase. Even if it is expressed in plural, the CCA can best be understood as a single arrangement. The CCA concerns how the Member States and the Union's institutions will cooperate on a strategic and high political level in Brussels in case of a crisis. The very heart of CCA consists of a specific Crisis Steering Group subordinated to the Member States' EU ambassadors in Coreper II (Comité des Représentants Permanents). Coreper II is the coordination and decision level next under the ministerial level in the Council and the forum where the EU ambassadors principally handle institutional and cross-sector issues.⁴