What is the EU doing for the world? Meet ECHO, one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid donors

By Aydin Clara Orberk, 7 minutes

ECHO stands for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations. It is one of the 34 Directorates-Generals of the European Commission and has approximately 400 staffers. Directorate-Generals or DGs are departments with responsibility for specific domains, not unlike national ministries. Most are headed by the European Commissioner responsible for the corresponding policy area - for instance, the CLIMA (Climate action) DG is currently headed by the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Franz Timmermans - and a Director-General, who manages day-to-day affairs and reports to the European Commissioner. 

Humanitarian Aid 

ECHO funds and collaborates with around 200 humanitarian partners to provide humanitarian aid across the globe, as mandated by article 214 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Subsection (1) provides that ‘Operations in the field of humanitarian aid (...) shall be intended to provide ad hoc assistance and relief and protection for people in third countries who are victims of natural or man-made disasters, in order to meet the humanitarian needs resulting from these different situations.’

In fact, ECHO is one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid donors. For instance, in 2018 ECHO funded humanitarian aid operations for more than €1.8 billion in more than 90 countries. Its main mission is ‘to preserve lives, prevent and alleviate human suffering and safeguard the integrity and dignity of populations affected by natural disasters and man-made crises’. Less than 1% of the EU budget goes to ECHO (which amounts to around 4 euros per citizen per year), but it allows ECHO to reach millions of people in crisis every year. Furthermore, like the Maastricht Treaty, ECHO turned 30 this year!

One of ECHO’s first operations took place in Zagreb in December 1992 while tensions were high in the Balkans. Credit: European Union

How does ECHO determine where to provide aid?

ECHO provides aid irrespective of political priorities in that it is purely set on needs, that is: on the assessed urgency for relief. This is one of its principles: as per subsection (2) of article 214 TFEU, ECHO’s humanitarian aid operations are conducted in compliance with the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and non-discrimination. These principles are grounded in International Humanitarian Law and mean that ECHO

• addresses human suffering, with particular attention to the most vulnerable, while respecting the dignity of all victims (humanity);

• is provided solely on the basis of needs, without any kind of discrimination (impartiality);

• does not favour any side in a conflict (neutrality);

• is independent of any (political, economic, military…) agenda (independence).

Each year, the extent of and urgency for relief of known crises are evaluated in order to decide how to allocate the budget, but a significant part of the budget is set aside for unforeseen humanitarian crises. ECHO usually does not hand out assistance itself which is why it has partnerships with, for instance, UN agencies, UNICEF, or international organisations like the Red cross. Accordingly, ECHO can only aid countries that allow the NGOs access to it. Hence, for instance, there is funding available to aid severe food shortage in North Korea but it cannot be deployed because North Korea refuses NGOs any access. 

Further, ECHO only funds humanitarian aid outside the EU because as per the treaties, the prerogative of ECHO is vis-à-vis third countries. This is why, for instance, not ECHO but the Internal Affairs DG helped the Ukrainian refugees arriving in Poland and other neighbouring countries. Limited exceptions have been temporarily made in the past, such as a humanitarian program helping refugees arriving in Greece given the Syrian war crisis, but after five years the Directorate General for Internal Affairs took it over as it was within the EU. 

Lastly, one of the strengths of ECHO is its field network given its 49 field offices across 41 countries. ECHO can be distinguished from the International Partnerships (INPA) DG, formerly known as International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO), which gives long-term, developmental aid. 

Examples of operations

ECHO can provide general humanitarian aid, emergency humanitarian aid, emergency food aid, aid to refugees and displaced persons, and disaster prevention and preparedness. 

It notably distributed emergency medical and nutritional assistance by a dozen Humanitarian Air Bridge flights to areas of Somalia that are no longer accessible by road, as well as to Afghanistan.

ECHO documents its missions on Instagram. Somalia is currently experiencing a severe famine due to extreme drought and the shortage of imported grains caused by the Ukraine war. Credit: ECHO via instagram

Other examples include the aid provided by ECHO during the Covid-19 pandemic: it funded Covid-related needs amounting to €450 million in 2020 and coordinated the delivery of over 1,570 tonnes of humanitarian and/or medical aid through over 80 flights to critical areas in Africa, Asia and the Americas. More recently, as of June 2022, the European Commission had allocated €348 million for humanitarian aid programmes to help civilians affected by the war in Ukraine, €13 million of which went to civilians in Moldova. A total of more than 60,000 tonnes of life-saving assistance have been delivered to Ukraine. 

Civil protection

Next to humanitarian aid, ECHO also provides civil protection. They are complementary; in the former, operations departments share competences with EU Member States while in the latter, the EU assumes a supporting role, coordinating voluntary contributions of in-kind assistance from countries participating in the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. EU Member States and 7 third countries, notably Island, Norway, Serbia and Turkey are part of this programme which consists in coming to the rescue when an emergency overwhelms the regional first respondents. This mechanism has been activated for more than 600 emergencies since its creation in 2001, and this number has been on the rise since the pandemic - there have been 114 emergencies in 2021. ECHO is incredibly fast in delivering its aid: in general a maximum of 24 hours pass between the request for assistance and the delivery of assistance when help is requested within the EU, and a maximum of 36 hours for outside the EU.

Credit: European Commission

Thus ECHO ensures rapid and effective delivery of EU relief assistance. The mechanism however has the caveat that the country affected by disaster has to activate the Civil Protection Mechanism first, and some participatory third countries, like Turkey, sometimes seem hesitant to request assistance. 

Nonetheless, successful examples of solidarity through the mechanism include the deployment of over 150 rescue workers from France, Italy and Austria when devastating floods struck Belgium in Summer 2021. ECHO has also financially and operationally supported 1,000 medical evacuations of Ukrainian patients via its Civil Protection Mechanism to provide them with specialised healthcare in hospitals across 18 Member States. The overall emergency assistance to Ukraine is the largest and most complex emergency response operated up until now with this mechanism. 

Further, given the current climate change caused fires, draughts and so forth, ECHO has requested Member States to buy planes to extinguish the increasingly frequent and intense summer fires, and operate them while the costs are covered by the Directorate-General. The Rescue EU Programme, an upgrade to the Civil Protection mechanism, has made this possible. RescEU thus establishes a new reserve of resources (the ‘RescEU reserve’) which includes a fleet of firefighting planes and helicopters, medical evacuation planes, and a gradual stockpiling of medical items. Hence, to extinguish the raging french wildfires in August 2022, 4 RescEU firefighting planes positioned in Greece and Sweden were dispatched, as well as back-up firefighting teams from Germany, Poland, Austria and Romania.

To conclude, the European Union not only constitutes hope for democracy for people living in States under undemocratic regimes, it also remarkably and concretely helps various States around the world every year by providing swift life-saving assistance according to their needs when they are struck by natural or man made disasters or other emergencies. Today, ECHO’s annual humanitarian budget is just over €1 billion, which allows it to help millions of people across the globe each year. Obviously, humanitarian aid does not solve crises, it only alleviates them. Still, such aid is incredibly valuable in critical situations. Finally, the civil protection mechanism has proven essential in combating natural disasters such as fires and droughts these last two summers, which are likely to increase with the man-caused global warming of our earth.

ECHO is one of the DGs in which bluebook traineeship candidates can apply, and you can read about bluebook traineeship opportunities on our blog here. 

Read more: Europa newsroom’s website allows you to browse the latest EU press releases in any field, such as humanitarian aid, here.