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The Spanish Home Affairs Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, at the opening of the Meeting of Directors-General for Civil Protection. EFE

Representatives from eight EU countries will participate in a radiological accident simulation at Barajas airport

EU civil protection authorities are studying how to improve co-ordination systems in order to jointly tackle major disasters and emergencies, at a seminar opened by the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.

According to the minister, co-operation and co-ordination are the principles on which to build a "strong, united and active" European civil protection with which to deal with natural disasters or large concentrations of people.

In particular, the seminar will focus on analysing how to improve the European Civil Protection Mechanism and developing action protocols and prevention mechanisms in areas such as those endorsed by the European Council:

--Forest fires: The conditions have been established to develop prevention policies at all organisational levels, to involve all players in disaster management, to improve the functioning of prevention instruments and to strengthen international co-operation.

--Psychosocial care for victims of major disasters:Promote the creation of European psychosocial intervention units and extend psychosocial intervention to disaster survivors and the families of those who have been killed or wounded.

--- A co-ordinated civil protection response to extraordinary events that bring together large concentrations of people, such as cultural or sporting events or protests.

During the six months of the Spanish Presidency of the EU, the European Civil Protection Mechanism was activated on 12 occasions to deal with emergencies such as floods in Poland and Hungary, or earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

Faced with these events, "the European response has been swift and co-ordinated," said Rubalcaba, who also announced that by the end of the Spanish Presidency, a simulated plane crash in an environment with radiological contamination will take place which will involve a hundred people from eight European countries.

The exercise will take place from 25 to 27 June at Madrid-Barajas airport and will simulate an accident that results from a plane that lands off the runway and crashes into a building that stores active radiological substances for hospital use.

This exercise envisages the possibility of a large number of victims of different nationalities and the activation of the corresponding civil protection plans in an environment of radiological contamination.