PA Secure already had an experience working together with colleagues from EUSDR, EUSAIR and EUSALP already in 2018 – when all four macro-regional strategies contributed to a session at the EU Civil Protection Forum in Brussels. The session was called Transnational cooperation for effective disaster risk management and focused mostly on environmental risks. In February 2023 PA Secure representative was invited to Bratislava for the final event of the DAREnet project – “A practitioner network to strengthen flood resilience in Danube region”. Andriy Martynenko, Adviser at CBSS Safe and Secure Region and the coordinator of the PA Secure contributed to the conversation on improving cooperation between volunteers and government agencies during international disaster response and described international cooperation in civil protection in the Baltic Sea Region based on the experiences of the CBSS Civil Protection Network and EUSBSR Policy Area Secure. The resulting policy recommendations can be found in the final state-of-the-art report: Towards a macro-regional disaster management framework in the Danube Region.
The topic of volunteerism in disaster risk management is very important in the Baltic Sea Region as well, many of the lessons learned from the Disaster management Working Group of EUSDR Policy Area 5 and vice versa. During the event, the representatives of EUSDR and EUSBSR signed a letter of intent to collaborate in the field of disaster management and agreed that both PAs will invite each other’s representatives to steering group meetings, share projects results and publications and exchange view on the topic of disaster risk management.
