Every year, more and more people are the victims of humanitarian crises - whether man-made conflicts or natural disasters. The worst hit are civilians, and in particular the most vulnerable sectors of society. As a result, Europe has an ever more crucial role to play in bringing relief to those who suffer. As crises have proliferated across the world over the last decade, the EU has stepped up its humanitarian and reconstruction activities. In the course of the year 2000, ECHO, the EU service responsible for humanitarian aid, provided assistance to more than 18 million people in need.

Reading this brochure should help you to understand that you are part of a wider community that shows solidarity with the rest of the world. Millions of lives are saved each year thanks to political decisions to take practical action in support of those who are most vulnerable. These are not just words. Solidarity is something we should all be aware of - it is one of the values that shapes who we are and who we will become.

The images of conflicts and disasters which fill our television screens and newspapers are the backdrop to our world's increasingly complex and vulnerable environment. As the scale of natural disasters and conflicts increases, humanitarian needs grow. The EU responds by providing emergency assistance to victims of disasters and conflicts based on their needs around the world. It does this through the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO). ECHO's mission is to alleviate suffering, maintain the dignity of those affected and save lives. This is one of the most tangible expressions of the EU's core value of solidarity. This publication is a part of a series that explains what the EU does in different policy areas, why the EU is involved and what the results are.

This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception.

A comprehensive, best practices resource for public health and healthcare practitioners and students interested in humanitarian emergencies.

First published in 2008 and based on an innovative framework for analysing the EU's external politics, this paperback edition provides a historical overview of and theoretical conclusions about the EU's global role. Taking an original approach, the volume highlights the expanding political science literature on Europe's international role in a range of external policy domains. It focuses in particular on the 'soft' dimension of Europe's international action which has previously been much neglected. Carefully structured to make this ideal supplementary reading for students and scholars of European politics and foreign policy, the book will equally appeal to a wider audience in political economy, security policy and international relations more generally.

Media have played an important role in framing the public debate on the “refugee crisis” that peaked in autumn of 2015. This report examines the narratives developed by print media in eight European countries and how they contributed to the public perception of the “crisis”, shifting from careful tolerance over the summer, to an outpouring of solidarity and humanitarianism in September 2015, and to a securitisation of the debate and a narrative of fear in November 2015. Overall, there has been limited opportunity in mainstream media coverage for refugees and migrants to give their views on events, and little attention paid to the individuals’ plight or the global and historical context of their displacement. Refugees and migrants are often portrayed as an undistinguishable group of anonymous and unskilled outsiders who are either vulnerable or dangerous. The dissemination of biased or ill-founded information contributes to perpetuating stereotypes and creating an unfavourable environment not only for the reception of refugees but also for the longer-term perspectives of societal integration.