ECR members Adam Banaszak and Roberto Ciambetti shared their insights on these two topics with participants of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) Natural Resources (NAT) Commission meeting with Mr Banaszak focusing on disaster risk reduction and Mr Ciambetti on EU health policy.

For ECR NAT coordinator, Mr Adam Banaszak, there was no better occasion than the signing of the Joint Action Plan between the CoR and the UNDRR to highlight what he sees as the most important elements in the promotion of disaster risk reduction at local level in European countries. One aspect he referred to is communities planning for self-help: "As it often takes a significant amount of time for external help to arrive, we have seen that community action is the fastest and most effective way of limiting the damage caused by a disaster".

As CoR rapporteur on three different opinions pertaining to the subject, Mr Banaszak used the opportunity to reiterate his call for focus to be on preventive action – "whilst response assistance is crucial, we must look at resilience to future disasters. Our infrastructure needs to be able to better withstand the negative effects of disasters. Disasters know no borders and their frequency and intensity is increasing".

The second debate was devoted to EU health policy in the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe and here our member Mr Roberto Ciambetti spoke about where the pitfalls lie and where there are room for improvements. Member of the CoR delegation for the Conference on the Future of Europe Roberto Ciambetti began by stating that "cross-border collaboration and standardised pandemic preparedness must be established to ensure existing health inequalities are suitably addressed and reduced".

The health rapporteur referenced his home town of Veneto in north-Eastern Italy to provide context - one of the hardest hit regions in the early stages of the pandemic - and said that "we should never be under-ambitious when it comes to health, we must cooperate across the EU but regions need to be able to act more independently when it comes to health crises". 

The NAT Commission meeting took place in hybrid format on 27 September.