'No country is able to cope alone': EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Call it the "crisis crisis". A record surge in the number and frequency of extreme climate events afflicting millions of human beings is stretching Europe's disaster response system to the limit, a top EU official has warned. Requests for emergency assistance from the European Union's humanitarian aid reserves have spiked some 400 percent in the past couple of years, amid a cascading succession of wildfires, floods and droughts that have ravaged large swathes of Europe, Jenaz Lenarčič, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, told FRANCE 24.