Background of the 112
Legislation
The European emergency number 112 was established by a Council Decision of 29 July 1991. All the Member States were requested to introduce the European emergency number 112.
The main legislation concerning the 112 is the Universal Service Directive which has been adopted in March 2002. The Directive further detailed requirements concerning 112:
- Free of charge: Member States must ensure that users of fixed and mobile telephones, including payphones, are able to call 112 free of charge.
- No discrimination: 112 calls must be appropriately answered and handled, irrespective of whether 112 or other national emergency numbers are dialled. Some Member States (Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands) have introduced 112 as their main emergency number, while in most Member States 112 operates alongside national emergency numbers.
- Caller location: Member States must also ensure that emergency services are able to establish the location of the person calling 112. The ability to locate the caller in case of an emergency may be of great significance in a situation where the person is unable to state his or her location, which can happen particularly when calling from mobile phones or while travelling abroad.
- Raising awareness: all EU countries must inform citizens (nationals and visitors) of the existence of 112 and in which circumstances they should call it.
Ongoing Telecoms Reform. As part of the broader reform of the EU telecommunications rules, the Commission has recently proposed Telecom Reform. Focus is particularly set on improving access to the 112 for people with disabilities.
Recent statistics
Flash Eurobarometer No 262 on The European Emergency Number 112 published in February 2009 provides us recent data concerning the knowledge of the 112 by Europeans, their access to information about the emergency number and their opinion about the usefulness of such a number.
Usefulness of the European emergency number 112
- A large majority of EU citizens (94%) totally agreed, or tended to agree, about the usefulness of having an emergency number available anywhere in the EU. Respondents in the UK were again the least convinced about the value of such a number (87% tended to agree or totally agreed).
- Nine out of 10 EU citizens agreed (they agreed totally or tended to agree) that access to emergency services via 112 for users with disabilities should be improved, but the individual country responses varied from 75% in the Netherlands to 97% in Greece.
Information about the European emergency number 112
- Just over six out of 10 EU citizens did not agree that people were adequately informed about the existence of the European emergency number 112. In just three EU countries (Czech Republic, Romania and Luxembourg), more than half of respondents thought people were well informed.
- Although Member States are obliged to inform citizens about the existence of the European emergency number 112, almost seven out of 10 interviewees (69%) said they had not received any information in the past 12 months and only one in five (21%) said they had seen or heard information about 112.
- The proportion of respondents who said they had received information about 112 as the European emergency number in the past 12 months ranged from 7% in the UK and Greece to 60% in Bulgaria.
- Four out of five of these respondents (81%) named media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, the Internet) as their source of information about the European emergency number 112. Only one out of 10 (9%) reported telecommunications operators as their information sources.
Knowledge of the European emergency number 112
- The general public is still generally unfamiliar with 112 as the European emergency number. Only one in four interviewees (24%) could spontaneously identify 112 as the number to call for emergency services anywhere in the EU. A larger proportion of citizens (45%) said they would call 112 for emergencies within their own country.
- Knowledge of 112, as the number to call in an emergency situation anywhere in the EU, still varied greatly dependent on the respondent's own country (from 3% in Italy to 58% in Czech Republic). The proportion of respondents who mentioned 112 for emergencies within their own country ranged from 1% in Greece to 98% in Sweden.
- Having knowledge about the existence of 112 as an emergency number to call in one's own country, still does not necessarily mean that respondents knew that this was the European emergency number.
(all the data come from Eurobarometer survey)
Flash Eurobarometer No 262 - The European Emergency Number 112 (546KB)Implementation of the European emergency number 112
In March 2009, the Communication Committee of the European Commission published the 2nd Summary report on the Implementation of the European emergency number 112 (DG INFSO/B2).
The objective of this working document was to gather as complete data as possible on the functioning of 112 in the Member States, as one of the follow-up measures to the Written Declaration of the European Parliament on 112, adopted on 6 September 2007.
The Report analyses the information submitted by 25 Member States in response to COCOM Questionnaire (document COCOM08-37 Final) on the implementation of the European emergency number 112 in 2008.
The Report analyses following topics:
- access to 112
- call handling
- caller location
- promotion of the 112
COCOM 2008 (results for 2007)
