Three European Agencies have long been cooperating with the aim of supporting national authorities carrying out coast guard functions.
Through several bilateral and trilateral agreements, EFCA, EMSA and Frontex joined efforts 10 years ago to help more than 300 civilian and military authorities to protect European waters and thousands of kilometers of coastline. Together, the Agencies support the Member States, and its citizens.
The cooperation was formally strengthened in 2016 by the common article. One year later, a tripartite working arrangement was established to define the modalities of the cooperation.
Aftet three years of activities the agencies now deepened their collaboration to tackle threats in the maritime domain. The cooperation focuses on the following main areas:
- Information sharing;
- Surveillance and communication services;
- Capacity building;
- Risk analysis;
- Capacity sharing.
Examples of their cooperation also include:
- Exchange of vessels’ position information to improve maritime awareness;
- Remotely piloted aircrafts for surveillance;
- Cross training among national authorities;
- Search and rescue;
- Fisheries control.
