Harm Bastian Harms
As German civil protection expert of Johanniter Harm Bastian is active in the European Union Civil Protection since the year 2004. In 2006, he was the EUCP team leader in the first African mission of the Mechanism during the floods in Ethiopia.
He was the project manager of the EUCP co-funded projects EUTAC TAST, EURAMET, EURACARE, EURACARE Flight & Shelter and a member of the management of the European Modular Field Hospital project. He also was the deputy course director of the EU Assessment Mission Courses in Cyprus (2006-2019) and the EU MODEX exercise director for medical and USAR capacities since 2015.
For me, EU MODEX means regularly exercising together with many colleagues and friends from all over Europe at the highest level and being better prepared with our civil protection capacities to protect the lives and property of our fellow citizens in the event of major disasters. In short, for me, EU MODEX is European solidarity at its best.
My wish for the future of EU MODEX is to emerge stronger from the pandemic with new initiatives and creative ideas and to resume this important European exercise programme for civil protection capacities as soon as possible.
The period of pandemic interruption of EU MODEX has been used wisely to develop new possibilities of a virtual exercise participation and new content as well as IT-based exercise control elements that need now to be further developed in practice.
This will provide new experiences for the participants of EU MODEX and enable the possibility of virtual participation by responders from other parts of the world, who can, for example, exercise together with European experts in a UCC or EMTCC. In this way, EU MODEX will be able to simulate the reality of international disaster relief operations even better in the future.
Furthermore, I wish all EU MODEX participants to continue to exercise regularly with many colleagues from all parts of Europe and the European neighbourhood, to share their broad experiences, to find further opportunities for cooperation and to make new friends to be even better prepared together to respond to current and future threats.
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