The Crisis and Support Centre
The Crisis and Support Centre of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs is active 24/7. When a crisis occurs abroad, it protects French nationals and coordinates France’s emergency humanitarian assistance to help local populations.
The centre was created in 2008 to bolster France’s ability to respond to crisis situations against a global backdrop of large-scale disasters, with an increasing number of French nationals living and travelling abroad.
It works actively during and also ahead of crises with anticipation, preparation, monitoring and warning missions to provide the quickest response possible. In post-crisis contexts, it supports countries that have been weakened by working to stabilize them.
The CDCS’s work
• Monitoring and analysing information and informing French nationals
• Managing consular crises
• Protecting French nationals abroad: processing individual matters
• Providing medical and psychological expertise
• Managing France’s humanitarian action
• Stabilizing post-crisis countries
• Supporting State agencies and businesses
The CDCS’s tools for travellers
The Crisis and Support Centre supports French nationals during their travel abroad and provides two tools which travellers should think to check before leaving France for their safety.
• Consult the “travel advice” page
• Add duty travel to the Ariane website
The CDCS’s work with partners
The Crisis and Support Centre mobilizes and coordinates all the resources of the Quai d’Orsay and other government departments in the event of a crisis abroad.
The CDCS is part of the interministerial work and works in close collaboration with: the General Secretariat for Defence and National Security, the Ministry for the Armed Forces’ Joint Operations and Planning Centre, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Interior’s Operational Centre for Interministerial Monitoring of Crises and in collaboration with France’s National Public Health Agency.
The Crisis and Support Centre also has a network of extremely active partners to deal with crisis situations outside France. It sometimes joins forces with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, business foundations, local or regional authorities, UN and European bodies and crisis centres from other countries.
Updated: Nov 2021