Public health officials from EU member states and four candidate countries have trained together in Ljubljana to improve the operation of national emergency coordination centres. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the workshop focused on practical arrangements for detecting threats, organising information and activating a response when a health emergency develops.
The three-day event took place on 5–7 October 2026. Slovenia’s National Institute of Public Health hosted the training, which ECDC organised with the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe.
Turning an alert into a coordinated response
Participants examined epidemic intelligence, preparedness, early detection and response. Exercises on emergency activation protocols addressed a basic operational question: what happens after a worrying signal reaches the authorities?
Public health emergency operations centres, commonly called PHEOCs, bring information, specialist expertise and coordination together. Their role is to support decisions and organise the response. They are not substitutes for hospitals, laboratories or other services responsible for delivering care and gathering evidence.
This helps explain why training concerns day-to-day procedures as well as crisis plans. Information needs to reach the appropriate people, responsibilities need to be understood and activation arrangements need to work before a real emergency tests them. A centre’s value lies in how those functions connect, rather than simply in having a designated room or institution.
Candidate countries join the same learning network
Officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine took part alongside their EU counterparts. The Brussels Times reported that participants considered approaches that could be adapted and expanded according to national requirements.
The training sat within the EOC-NET European Regional Forum, a joint ECDC–WHO/Europe platform. It also received support through ECDC’s Accession Support Action, which helps strengthen communicable-disease prevention and control and the implementation of EU public health standards.
Participation in the workshop does not itself certify that every national system meets those standards. It provides a route for exchanging operating practices and developing working relationships between officials who may need to coordinate during a cross-border event.
The immediate result is shared training and a stronger professional network. The longer-term operational question is whether the procedures rehearsed in Ljubljana can be incorporated into national systems and used reliably when an alert requires action.
