Overview
- About 1,200 people took part in the exercise at Cologne’s RheinEnergie‑Stadion, including roughly 800 emergency personnel and 400 actors used to simulate contaminated civilians.
- Participants rehearsed decontamination of people, vehicles and equipment to test procedures for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.
- The drill put a newly formed unit called rescEU‑CBRN‑DECON through realistic scenarios to check equipment, workflows and on‑site patient routing.
- The unit is financed under the EU’s rescEU framework and will be provided by the Technisches Hilfswerk, the Federal Police and the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, with officials expecting operational readiness by the end of 2026.
- Officials and EU representatives observed the exercise to judge interoperability and to inform final training, logistics and political sign‑off that will determine cross‑border deployment rules and response times.