CESCI organised an Austrian-Hungarian rescue services workshop as part of our Legal accessibility project

CESCI’s long-running Legal accessibility project continues with this year’s topic on expanding the ambulance mobility to the Austrian-Hungarian and the Hungarian-Slovak border regions. To this end, we organised an Austrian-Hungarian rescue services workshop on 2 July 2021 in Sopron, where stakeholders discussed the necessary steps to be taken. 

With the support of the Ministry of Justice CESCI launched its first Legal accessibility project in 2016 with the aim of identifying persisting legal and administrative obstacles around the borders of Hungary. As one of the major obstacles identified was the lack of cross-border services of ambulance cars, CESCI cooperated with experts and the rescue services of neighbouring EU countries to create rules that define the conditions for service provision and the possibilities of cross-border rescue within the framework of the third Legal accessibility project in 2018. 

In 2019, CESCI organised a second meeting where the good practice of the Austrian-Czech borderland was presented by the representatives of the Notruf Nieder-Österreich. In order to better understand and to popularise the system, CESCI organised a study trip to Lower Austria where the Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian participants were given the opportunity to gain experience on the daily operation of the cross-border rescue system. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic not only prevented the stakeholders from meeting each other but the capacities of the national/provincial rescue services were overburdened with daily challenges, thus the planned workshops had to be postponed. 

This year, however, CESCI organised an Austrian-Hungarian workshop for rescue services. The meeting held in Sopron on 2 July 2021 had a dual aim: on the one hand, to offer a professional contribution enabling the conclusion of the contract that would allow the cooperation of Hungary and Austria during rescue operations, to learn and converge the views of the parties and, on the other hand to start the preparations of a joint Interreg project that would allow the creation of such a collaboration during the next funding period. 

The meeting was a success, both the Austrian and Hungarian parties welcomed CESCI’s initiative and adopted a roadmap for the next steps aiming to move the case of the interstate treaty at national government level. It was also decided that the organisation of a meeting was necessary, where representatives of provinces and counties would be able to negotiate at operational level the tools and protocols used during cross-border rescue operations as well as future shared projects. CESCI undertook the organisation and coordination of that meeting as well.