Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), a civil protection 'hub' for monitoring disasters and enhancing preparedness and resilience of disaster-prone countries. The most recent uses of the Civil Protection mechanism occurred during flooding in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia in 2014 and evacuating EU nationals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Commission delivered a major piece of advice on improving strategic crisis management in the European Union. As well as summarising the historical and current provision within DG-ECHO and elsewhere, the advice recommends "that existing and future legislation and instruments should be integrated in a framework that is capable of dealing with increasingly systemic and large-scale crises in a structural way". European Parliament Report The Committee on Development (CD) of the EP commissioned the Overseas Development Institute to undertake a project on the effectiveness of international development assistance from the European Commission in 2010. The project focused on the cases of Cambodia, Mozambique and Peru. The findings and policy suggested can be summarized as follows: Harmonisation and alignment (H&A) is crucial for state capacity and should be expanded from sharing and spreading information to increasing joint activities in the short-term. Donor harmonisation efforts need to be scaled up to include agreements on joint technical assistance and the streamlining of systems and procedures Extremely fragmented aid systems impose unreasonably high transaction costs on the government, drains valuable resources, and fundamentally weakens state capacity. EC procedures and structures remain highly complicated and bureaucratic. Much of the success or failure of cooperation depends on individual interactions, specific innovators and appropriate staffing levels to carry out the tasks at hand, but the costs are also quite high. Country Strategy Papers could improve aid effectiveness — but their quality is uneven. Relations between HQ and delegations needs to be improved. See also European Commissioner for Crisis Management Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN) Emergency management References External links ECHO Website ec.europa.eu ECHO Humanitarian aid organizations in Europe European Union foreign aid