Work Package 6 (WP6) has organised a two days’ workshop on cross-sectoral collaboration in the response to a biological or chemical terror attack. The workshop took place in Zagreb (Croatia), on 29 and 30 November 2023, with the participation of 45 experts from 13 European JA partners’ countries, from the three relevant sectors: Health, Security-Law Enforcement, and Civil Protection.

During the workshop, participants followed an itinerary through different working sessions on strategic preparedness and response capacities to identify and analyse hot issues related to five selected topics with focus on cross-sectoral collaboration:

1. Surveillance systems, shared threat detection and joint risk assessment
2. Cross-sectoral emergency planning (including strategic stockpiling) & governance
3. Cross-sectoral information sharing and flow in preparedness and response
4. Cross-sectoral capacity building, human resources, training and exercise
5. Post-incident joint evaluation, recovery and corrective measures

First, the participants were allowed to share the key issues related to each of these topics based on their own national experience. These issues were further prioritized during an interactive plenary voting session. Priority issues where then analysed based on past events or exercises experience and deconstructed to identify both facilitating and blocking aspects for cross-sectoral collaboration improvement. Each group of experts had then the opportunity to reflect on what would be the ideal (or at least a better) situation and the required interventions to reach it in their own country, before exchanging their ideas in plenary session. The final goal was to better define the scope, target audience, structure and main outlines to be considered for the development of a guiding document addressed to improve cross-sectoral collaboration in preparedness and response to bio/chem terrorist attacks, integrating all the WP6 activities results.