Reading Time: 3 minutes

From Interoperability to Operational Mobility: Connecting Europe’s First Responders

Melissa K. Scott
Communication and Policy Officer
PSCEurope

David Lund
EUCCS Preparation Programme Coordinator
PSCEurope

Imagine a wildfire spreading across two countries. Driven by strong winds, it crosses borders faster than anyone can fathom. On one side, local firefighters are already stretched to their limits. Within hours, helicopters and ground crews from neighbouring countries are on their way, responding to the request of help of country’s national authorities where the fire has started.

Then comes one of the most difficult parts of the work: the teams from the neighbouring countries carry radios and devices configured for their own national networks. Talk groups don’t match, while procedures and priorities differ from one national team to another. Commanders can see the fire but not always their colleagues’ positions, and a request to reroute a helicopter has to travel through a chain of liaison officers instead of a single channel. Every minute spent sorting out communications is a minute the fire spreads, a minute that is lost.

In 2026, the wildfire season has been exceptionally and overwhelmingly severe. By the end of July, the area burned across Europe was about 2.5 times the usual level (1), demonstrating a need for improved disaster management and disaster preparedness, processes, procedures and availability of resources, including mobile communication services that support all of these needs.

The response has been strong cross-border. For instance, in Belgium, two rescEU planes were dispatched from Sweden, alongside helicopters from the Netherlands, Norway and Germany, to support firefighters battling the blaze in the Hautes Fagnes, (Belgium) where more than 3,000 hectares were lost to the fires. Earlier in the summer, Portugal and France both activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism within days of each other, and firefighters and aircraft from several countries were deployed.

When such disasters strike, the value of what EUCCS will bring in the near future becomes clearer. The EU Critical Communication System (EUCSS) aims to solve this problem. This system of systems will support the interconnection of national critical mobile communication systems of EU Member States and Schengen countries, enabling the Operational Mobility of First Responders: their ability to carry out their operations with mobile communication wherever they are, whenever they need communicate and with whoever they are tasked to cooperate.

EURO-3C, launched in July this year will bring added value to the work that the EUCCS Preparation Programme (2) has been leading in the past 10 years in building the groundwork that has been feeding into this EC-driven initiative. While EUCCS defines what interoperable critical communications must deliver, EURO-3C will demonstrate the how: the kind of sovereign edge-cloud infrastructure that could help deliver it.

The EUCCS proposed regulation (2) includes support for continuous innovation.  EURO-3C is innovating to explore how telecommunications, edge and cloud resources distributed across different infrastructures can be federated and operated as part of a European ecosystem. This provides a valuable environment for demonstrating how different systems can work together while maintaining security, resilience and interoperability.

An important connection is resilience. Critical communications must continue to function when and where they are most needed. EURO-3C’s distributed Telco-Cloud-Edge approach can support services that are closer to users and data sources, helping to reduce latency and avoid reliance on a single centralised infrastructure. Combined with advanced connectivity and distributed computing capabilities, this approach can contribute to the development of more resilient services for emergency and crisis scenarios.

The technological overlap goes further. 5G and future 6G networks, edge computing, cloud technologies, cybersecurity and European technological sovereignty are all important elements in the evolution of next-generation critical communications. EURO-3C brings these technologies together in a large-scale European experimentation environment, creating opportunities to investigate how they can support demanding operational use cases.

This synergy-building could not be timelier. On 30th September, the European Commission tabled the EUCCS Legislative Proposal (2), that provides the legislative framework to support the interconnection of EU Member States and Schengen countries from 2030 onwards. And now, more than ever, the ambition and groundwork developed through initiatives such as EUCCS Preparation and EURO-3C can help support Europe on its journey towards a more connected, interoperable and resilient critical communications ecosystem.

 

Sources:

(1): Reference Link

(2): EUCCS legislative proposal