The earthquake in Türkiye and Syria tests the Union Civil Protection Mechanism on both sides of a border

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Gaziantep region of Türkiye in the early hours of Monday 6 February 2023 and also hit northern Syria. The High Representative, Josep Borrell, and the Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, described it the same day as one of the strongest earthquakes in the region in more than a hundred years[1]. By Sunday 12 February officials and medics had confirmed 33,179 deaths, of which 29,605 in Türkiye and 3,574 in Syria[6]. The figures will rise. Our generation has grown up with the Union Civil Protection Mechanism as a settled instrument. This disaster is its largest test, and the test has two halves. In Türkiye the Mechanism worked as designed. In Syria it met the limits that the Union's own law and the conflict impose.

What the Mechanism did in Türkiye

The legal basis is Decision No 1313/2013/EU of 17 December 2013 on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism. Article 7 of the Decision establishes the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), which operates around the clock and coordinates the response of the Member States in real time. Article 28 allows third countries to participate: EFTA countries that belong to the EEA and, under framework agreements, acceding countries, candidate countries and potential candidates[4]. Türkiye is a candidate country and a participating State in that sense. It activated the Mechanism on Monday 6 February[3].

The response was fast by any standard. On the day of the earthquake seventeen Member States, Albania and Montenegro offered 25 search and rescue teams and two medical teams[1]. By 7 February nineteen Member States had offered teams, eleven teams had arrived and the ERCC had deployed an EU Civil Protection Team of experts from eleven Member States[2]. By 8 February twenty Member States, Albania, Montenegro and Serbia had offered 31 search and rescue teams and five medical teams, with more than 1,500 rescuers and 100 dogs. The Commission released an initial EUR 3 million in emergency humanitarian assistance for Türkiye[3]. On 8 February the Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, announced a donors' conference for Türkiye and Syria, to be held in Brussels in March[5].

We note what this sequence proves. A participating State in the Mechanism receives the same treatment as a Member State when it asks for help. The ERCC did not need a political decision to act. The offers came from national civil protection services within hours, and the Union's role was to match them to Turkish needs. This is the result of ten years of legal design.

Where the Mechanism stopped in Syria

Syria is neither a Member State nor a participating State. Article 16 of the Decision provides that, for a disaster outside the Union, the affected country may request assistance through the ERCC, and that a request may also come through or from the United Nations and its agencies or a relevant international organisation. Union interventions may be autonomous or may contribute to an operation led by an international organisation, and Union coordination must fit within the overall coordination of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs[4]. The Syrian authorities requested activation on the morning of 8 February, for search and rescue teams, shelter and medicine. The Commission released an initial EUR 3.5 million in humanitarian assistance for Syria and said that the ERCC was contacting the Member States and the United Nations to channel offers[3]. The World Food Programme also activated the Mechanism, for tents, sleeping bags and heaters. Ten countries offered help and the WFP accepted only a few offers, including one from Austria, for north-west Syria[8].

The difficulty is access, and the Union does not control it. Under a Security Council arrangement reduced by a Russian veto to a single crossing, United Nations aid for north-west Syria may pass only through Bab al-Hawa[8]. A single UN convoy of ten trucks crossed there in the first week. On Sunday 12 February the UN relief chief, Martin Griffiths, wrote that the United Nations had "so far failed the people in north-west Syria"[6]. On Monday 13 February the United Nations announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed, after a meeting with Griffiths in Damascus, to open two further crossings from Türkiye, Bab al-Salam and Al Ra'ee, for an initial period of three months[7].

A second argument concerns sanctions. Damascus says that Union and United States sanctions block aid. The Commission's foreign affairs spokesman, Peter Stano, answered that the difficulties are "the result of the conflict situation". On 13 February the ambassadors of the Member States nevertheless began discussing a possible easing of the Syria sanctions regime, including the ban on dual-use equipment that could clear debris but could also serve the Syrian army. The United States announced on 10 February that it would ease its own sanctions for six months[8]. We consider that the Union's sanctions are narrower than the American ones and do not target the Syrian banking sector as a whole, as the editor of The Syria Report, Jihad Yazigi, observes[8]. The access problem is political and lies in Damascus and in the Security Council. A sanctions exemption will not open a crossing. It may, however, remove an excuse.

Four conclusions follow for the Union. First, the Council should adopt a time-limited humanitarian exemption in the Syria sanctions regime, with a reporting duty for the operators who use it, because the exemption costs the Union little. Second, the Commission should publish, within a month, an account of every offer made under the Mechanism for Syria, which organisation accepted or refused it and why, so that the Member States can see where their teams were turned away. Third, the Union should state in the Security Council that the three-month opening of Bab al-Salam and Al Ra'ee must be written into the cross-border resolution and must not depend on the consent of one government. Fourth, the donors' conference in March should allocate its Syrian funds to the organisations that reached the north-west in the first week, since the first week has shown who can deliver.