On 3 November 2026, at the European Civil Protection Forum, Commissioner Hadja Lahbib presented new guidelines to help people prepare for emergencies, with a focus on the first 72 hours of a crisis. Since the announcement, I often hear that people dislike the alarming tone, because war is not on their doorstep. But preparedness extends much further. Not long ago, while I was in Germany, we received an announcement that the water was not safe to drink. In the first hours, companies without a water supply had to send their people home.
The announcement is addressed to households and authorities, but it applies equally to an organisation: what would we do on our own, for three days, if the usual support was not there? When you are a critical business, the answer can’t be “we send everybody home” and freeze operations.
Source: European Commission, DG ECHO, 3 November 2026.
What the Commission announced
Three things came together in the same announcement:
- Non-binding guidelines for population preparedness, in four areas: 72-hour self-sufficiency, preparedness education, disability-inclusive preparedness and communicating risks and threats.
- An annual EU Preparedness Day on 23 October, starting in 2027. The date marks the anniversary of the creation of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism on 23 October 2001.
- A Recommendation on operational continuity and stress-testing, also non-binding, to help national civil protection contact points stay operational at all times, even during disruptive events.
All of this sits within the EU Preparedness Union Strategy adopted in March 2025. In the Commissioner’s words: “When disaster strikes, the first hours can make all the difference.”
Why 72 hours is a useful frame
The guidelines aim to help people meet their essential needs during the first three days of an emergency, while public assistance is being mobilised. That is a very honest premise: help takes time to arrive.
The same is true in an organisation. In the first hours of an incident, external support is rarely on site yet, and will most probably be busy helping a lot of people and companies. What exists is what you prepared: people who know what to do, and the freedom to do it.
Four questions borrowed from the guidelines
- Self-sufficiency: what do we need to keep going for 72 hours? Think of power, connectivity, key contacts, cash, critical stock, and a place where the team can meet.
- Education: who has been trained, and who has only read the plan? The Commission wants preparedness taught early, without creating fear. The same principle applies to teams: calm training beats alarming documents.
- Inclusion: does our plan work for everyone? Staff with disabilities, people on night shifts, remote workers and temporary staff should all be part of the planning, not an afterthought.
- Communication: who tells whom, how, and how fast? Timely, accessible and reliable information is one of the four pillars. Inside a company, it decides whether people act or wait.
The Recommendation: test the plan that keeps you running
The continuity Recommendation is written for civil protection contact points, but its logic is universal: develop operational continuity plans and test them regularly. An untested plan is an assumption. A stress-test shows where the assumptions break, ideally before a real crisis does.
For critical entities, this relates to the resilience obligations under the CER framework. For other organisations, it is simply good practice.
What I take from this
Preparedness is becoming a shared, whole-of-society responsibility, and organisations are part of it. You do not need a large budget to start. You need an honest answer to one question: what happens in our first 72 hours?
If you would like to work through that question with your team, let’s talk.