The second meeting of the ENAVSECG Coordination Hub Organon (ECHO/02), a subgroup of the European and North Atlantic Aviation Security Group (ENAVSECG) which mandated ECHO to steer efforts in aligning capacity building activities in the EUR/NAT regions by mapping available resources and linking them with States’ prevailing needs, was conducted from 9 to 10 December 2020 virtually in two languages, English and Russian, with simultaneous interpretation. The meeting was jointly chaired by Portugal, Kazakhstan and IATA.
This second meeting followed up on the work undertaken by the group since the first constituent meeting which was conducted from 22 to 23 October 2019 at the ICAO EUR/NAT office.
To achieve a better well targeted and not duplicating capacity building to support EUR/NAT States ECHO’s work is based on three pillars, mapping available capacity building, defining prevailing needs and linking both via a mechanism to be developed.
ICAO Headquarters, upon request voiced during the Second High Level Conference on Aviation Security in 2018, developed a global tool to map available capacity building activities and following ECHO/01 States, Regional Organizations and Industry started to feed into this tool.
A similar tool for mapping prevailing needs and reaching compliance with Annex 17 was not available, but following discussions during ECHO/01 and an agreement regarding what shall be reflected an initial tool was developed by the ECHO chairlady, and completed by members of the group to be further discussed in this second meeting. In the course of an intensive brainstorming how to develop and continue the work of ECHO there was consensus that the crisis imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has created new issues that have to be taken into account when talking about relevant capacity building and while overall prevailing needs are still valid, new recovery needs emerged that should also be addressed.
The meeting concluded on further work and actions needed to include the continuous population of the global capacity-building mapping tool, identification of further prevailing and recovery needs and the last most difficult step regarding the establishment of a mechanism to link identified needs with available capacity building activities.
While work continues between meetings, the next, third meeting of ECHO will take place from 15 to 16 September 2021 with the outcome reported to the ninth meeting of the European and North Atlantic Aviation Security Group (ENAVSECG).