Varna,
16/08/2024 07:30
 (BTA)
Bulgaria is the only country in the EU without a department that carries out state policy in the field of civil protection, the rector of Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar" Prof. Petar Hristov, PhD told BTA. He has been at the helm of the higher education institution since early 2019, having previously been successively head of the Department of National Security and dean of the Faculty of Law. Hristov created the first in Bulgaria (outside the so-called departmental higher schools) university specialty in national security protection. His research interests are in the field of legal foundations of security and risk management. He is the author of more than 100 scientific publications and is invited as a lecturer at leading universities in Poland, Croatia, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Cyprus, Serbia and the USA.
 
According to the additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1944 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2007, under which our country has obligations, civil protection means the implementation of humanitarian tasks aimed at preventing and protecting from military, other man-made and natural disasters, Hristov points out. According to him, the review of the legal acts and guidance documents of the EU countries, in which the term "civil protection" is used, shows that it refers to the set of non-military activities to mitigate damage to people, property, cultural heritage, critical infrastructure and the environment. This presupposes the presence in the system of the executive power of the EU countries of a department that performs two particularly important functions - to carry out the state policy in the field of disaster protection and to coordinate in peacetime and wartime the activities performed by the various services, public organizations and companies. Today, Bulgaria is the only EU member country that, after 27 July 2009, when the Ministry of Emergency Situations was closed, does not have a department that identifies and implements state policy in the field of civil protection, Hristov says. And he adds that in 2011, when the General Directorate "Civil Protection" was closed, the legal term "civil protection", permanently imposed in international public law and EU law, went out of circulation in our national law, being replaced by terms such as " disaster risk management", "disaster risk reduction", "non-military component of the defense system" or "contribution to national security in peacetime". Hristov is adamant that "civil defense" must be restored both as a legal term and as a state agency to determine and implement state policy.

The expert also pointed out that under the Disaster Protection Law, two permanent advisory bodies function in the Council of Ministers - the Disaster Risk Reduction Council and the Interdepartmental Commission for Recovery and Assistance. They should only ensure coordination in the sphere of executive power and cooperation with other bodies in determining and implementing state policy in the relevant area, Hristov added. He specified that since there is no unit in the Council of Ministers to develop national strategies, policies, draft laws and by-laws in the field of civil security, the National Strategy, which is a long-term political guidance document, is developed by the Disaster Risk Reduction Council, which proposes to be adopted by the Council of Ministers. The same council also develops a National Programme, which is a medium-term operational document, the implementation of which is ensured by the relevant regional programmes, in which the operational goals and the activities for their implementation are formulated, Hristov explained. His position is that this is paradoxical, especially considering that the political body of the executive, such as the regional governor, is required to submit the programme to the consultative body, which will adopt it.  

For the implementation of regional programmes, municipal programmes are developed, which are accepted by the Municipal Council at the proposal of the mayor, the expert added. And he specified that, in practice, after closing the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the structures of civil protection, the regulatory framework has "released" the government from many responsibilities, assigning them to the local authorities. The burdening of municipalities with increasing responsibilities for disaster risk reduction, without taking into account the limited possibilities of their budgets and the increased workload of officials, explains why they do not have up-to-date estimates for emergency evacuation and trained people to lead such operations, Hristov's position was. He emphasised that there is no information on what reserve of individual means of protection the individual municipalities have, in what condition the hiding places are and what part of the population can be hidden in them, whether the standard adopted in the EU member states for ensuring in reserve of tents, camping beds, field kitchens, dishes, etc.

If we accept that these are "technical" problems, the complex question is how to adopt the modern technological type of organization of activity in the field of civil protection, based on the "nature-society" system, the expert added. According to him, the ability to forecast and early warning of possible natural and anthropogenic catastrophes is of paramount importance. Today, the level of this ability is accepted as a universal criterion for assessing the degree of development of any society, Hristov pointed out and recalled that our country has untapped potential - access to satellite information, a developed network of geographic information systems, software capacity capable to integrate information flows and link them with models of possible risks and threats, ways of responding and neutralising possible consequences. However, in order for the necessary changes to take place, a radical change of the legal framework is needed, without which it is impossible for the state bureaucracy to adopt the new project-technological type of organizational behaviour, Hristov emphasised and clarified that it does not allocate funds for the maintenance of services and organizations, and the money goes to projects to solve a specific problem. The project organization implies a team, and the team principle is a prerequisite for the formation of a cluster of professional competencies, which means that each task should be solved by the appropriate specialists, at the right place and at the right time, the expert added.

Regarding the training offered by the Varna Free University, Hristov pointed out that the university prepares not only Bulgarian personnel in the field of fire safety and civil protection. As a good example, he pointed to the partnership with the University of Sakarya, which has recently been covered in the Turkish press. The publications actually cover only one moment of the quarter-century cooperation between the Turkish Fire Brigades and our university, the rector said. He recalled that VFU was the first Bulgarian university, which already in the mid-1990s, opened specialties for the training of personnel with higher education for the needs of national security, public order protection, countering crime, fire safety and civil protection. After the devastating earthquake in Kocaeli on 17 August 1999, the Association of Turkish Fire Brigades chose the Bulgarian model for training their own personnel with higher education, and after an unsuccessful attempt to contract their training with the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they turned to us, added Hristov. Thus, the first Turkish fire and emergency safety engineers were graduates of Varna Free University. Then, over the years, the partners implemented joint scientific forums, placements and internships of students, training of Turkish management and executive staff. As a result, the Master's programme in Intelligent Security Systems, which the Turkish press informed, was prepared with a general idea, based on the problems they faced in overcoming the consequences of the devastating earthquake in southeastern Turkey in early 2023, Hristov explained. And he added that the focus of the curriculum is placed on the opportunities provided by digitization and artificial intelligence to increase the ability to protect the population and the territory from natural and anthropogenic disasters and accidents.