The European Commission has proposed a cross-border communication system for police, fire brigades and ambulance crews, arguing that national emergency networks still fall silent the moment a responder crosses an internal border.
The EU Critical Communication System (EUCCS), presented in Brussels on September 30, would connect the national networks used by police, border authorities, firefighters, civil protection units and emergency medical services. It would cover all 27 member states and the four Schengen associated countries.
Home Affairs Commissioner Magnus Brunner, who days earlier set out plans for a Frontex rapid-reaction force, pointed to wildfires on the Belgian-German border in August. Once crews reached the frontier, he said, “their radio actually stopped working”.
Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen said the system would strengthen the response to “everyday incidents, accidents, fires” as well as to large-scale terrorism. It would serve more than five million first responders, she said.
Under the plan, the 31 countries would move from narrowband radio to broadband technology such as 5G, with EU satellites providing back-up when ground networks fail. Responders would share data, video, messages and location in real time from a single secure device.
Two new bodies would underpin it: an EU Network Monitoring Centre running a secure optical fibre network, and an EU Security Monitoring Centre tracking cyber threats and risks.
The Commission said member states would retain full control of their national networks and of the system’s governance, which would rest with an expert group of member states. It said the proposal creates no European command centre and grants authorities no new powers to monitor private communications.
The Commission’s impact assessment puts the additional direct cost at about €3.6 billion over seven years, of which roughly €2.4 billion would fall on national budgets. A further €12.7 billion for the wider shift to broadband is listed separately, since countries would have to modernise ageing radio networks anyway.
Little of it would be in place soon. A first group of countries is due to connect in 2030, a second in 2033, and all member states only by 2036.
That is more than a decade after the two emergencies cited in support of the plan: the Valencia floods of October 29, 2024, which killed more than 200 people, and the Iberian blackout of April 28, 2025, Europe’s worst power failure in two decades.
Neither was primarily a border problem. During the blackout, mobile and internet coverage collapsed inside Spain and Portugal, and in Valencia the delayed phone alert to residents was a regional failure.
The two regulations now pass to the European Parliament and the Council, which must adopt them before any rollout begins.
