The European Union's capacities for managing crises

Abstract

This article draws on a comprehensive new data set of crisis management capacities at the European Union level to highlight key patterns in their development and use. Organised within the categories of detection, sense‐making, decision‐making, coordination, meaning‐making, communication, and accountability, the data show considerable accumulation of capacities in detection and sense‐making, while decision‐making capacities lag behind. We find that most capacities are sector‐oriented rather than cross‐sectoral, and reside primarily within the European Commission rather than other EU institutions. Comparing the data to previous studies, we note that capacities overall are increasing and some are undergoing evolution; for example, horizon‐scanning tools once limited to collecting information have increasingly been given an analytical, “information enrichment” function akin to sense‐making.

The high representative and the Covid-19 crisis: a preliminary assessment

“…Our preliminary assessment of the HR/VP's role during the Covid-19 crisis also suggests that future research might develop along a series of axes. First, future analyses could investigate the implications of HR/VP Borrell's initiatives on the evolution of the EU as a crisis manager (Backman & Rhinard, 2018;Boin et al, 2013;Tercovich, 2014). They might examine the effectiveness of the HR/VP's coordination with the European Commission (Lavallée, 2013), or more specifically with the other EU external relations Commissioners.…”

The Crisisification of Policy‐making in the European Union

“…The list of other policies emanating from other areas of the EU and setting policy guidelines for crisis‐related cooperation in the EU is too lengthy to review here but includes financial resources such as a solidarity fund and billions of euro for risk prevention (for more, see Backman and Rhinard, ; Boin et al, ). Admittedly, it is difficult to assess the volume of these activities in comparison with the overall set of activities in which the EU is already engaged.…”

“…These systems thus 1 The research projects were funded by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (grants from 2006-9; 2010-13 and 2014-17) along with the EU Horizon 2020 project 'Trancrisis' (grant 649484; 2015-18) and the Nordforsk project 'NordSTEVA' . Additional data can be found in Backman andRhinard, 2017 andBoin et al, 2013. Altogether 42 interviews were conducted in four stages, during 2008, 2013, 2015 and 2017.…”

“…Numbering almost 30, these include the Early Warning and Response System (for communicating disease outbreaks), the animal disease notification system (for emerging animal health problems), the EU urgent radiological information exchange (for communicating urgent information in the event of a nuclear emergency), and the computer security incident response team (for notifying incidents of cyber‐attacks) in the European Commission. And they have grown of late: research shows a steep rise in both horizon scanning and early warning systems, which together grew from less than 10 in 2000 to more than 70 in 2015 (Backman and Rhinard, ).…”

Transboundary crisis management under the volcano: The case of the Icelandic ash cloud

“…This article does not offer an extensive account of the existing crisis management capacities in Europe. Instead, recent studies provide detailed reviews of these structures within (Backman & Rhinard, 2018; Boin et al., 2014; Boin, Ekengren, & Rhinard, 2013; Boin & Rhinard, 2008) and beyond (Blondin & Boin, 2018; Boin et al., 2013) the EU borders.…”