The 2024 Annual Report from the CTIF President
Thank you for choosing Automatic Translation. Currently we are offering translations from English into French and German, with more translation languages to be added in the near future. Please be aware that these translations are generated by a third party AI software service. While we have found that the translations are mostly correct, they may not be perfect in every case. To ensure the information you read is correct, please refer to the original article in English. If you find an error in a translation which you would like to bring to our attention, it would help us greatly if you let us know. We can correct any text or section, once we are aware of it. Please do not hesitate to contact our webmaster to let us know of any translation errors.
ANNUAL REPORT OF MILAN DUBRAVAC, PRESIDENT OF CTIF - CTIF DELEGATES ASSEMBLY 2024
Dear colleagues,
In addition to CTIF's regular work, the last year was marked by several important events. COP28, the European Firefighter Summit and the World Firefighter Congress were important events where CTIF represented its members with its presence.
At the COP28 conference in December 2023, CTIF joined the International Alliance for Reduction of Fire Emissions. The important initiative, promoted by the United Arab Emirates, will try to establish monitoring over emissions caused by fires and will serve as a platform for future reduction efforts. CTIF also offered experts in the field of environmental protection and statistics. We will inform all members about all further steps.
In April of this year, a summit of European firefighters took place in Paris. More information will be provided to you at this meeting. With its presence, CTIF supported the idea of a more uniform appearance of firefighters in the European Union in the future.
In May, the first World Fire Congress took place in Washington, USA. It was attended by around 60 countries from all continents. The initiative came from the fire administration of USA. CTIF is a member of the steering group of the Congress. The idea is to organize Congress every second year. As members of the steering group, we would like to have more influence in the decisions about the congress in the future, and we expect more precise rules regarding the organization in the future.
Commissions and working groups were active during the year. Almost all of them organize hybrid meetings which is good since more members can join and follow the work. We also successfully restarted three commissions: Fire investigation, Fire prevention and Tunnels.
The Executive committee, which manages the organization between the annual assemblies, was active as usual last year. In the past year, we met 20 times online. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the EC members for their active work during the year. Some members of EC were also present on COP28, European firefighters’ summit and World fire congress.
Cooperation with other associations with whom we have signed MoU was continuing as planned. I visited Assembly of OBA in August last year. It was agreed that OBA will in the future delegate their members in several CTIF Commissions and working groups for better exchange of knowledge.
Cooperation with FEU is most intensive within EU project DIREKTION. CTIF and FEU contributes practitioners input to this interesting project.
I visited and give presentation at annual Metro Fire Chiefs conference. There were some steps made to join some of Metro experts to CTIF commissions (Commission of extrication and new technology and Forest fires Commission).
Cooperation with EURO NCAP is continued with agreement on new road map prepared by Euro Ncap where our Extrication and new technologies commission will play important role.
World rescue organization cooperation is developing also. Two CTIF members are observers in WRO committee and one member of WRO is member of ENT Commission.
We are also in regular contact with IEDO.
The General Secretary and myself met virtually with INTERPOL representatives. We can expect in the future cooperation with this association in area of exchange of knowledge and experience.
Cooperation with both the Ordinary members and the Associate members in between the annual Delegate's Assemblies is very important. In CTIF we are aware that the National Committees are the real decision-makers in CTIF, but also those who can distribute knowledge and start activities in our member countries. Strong National Committees means strong CTIF and that we are aware of. Therefore, we decided in EC to start Strategic board. Strategic board will gather Presidents and heads of national committees. The Idea is to have a body which will be future policy maker for our organization. I intend to organize first meeting end of summer to decide on future way of working. Till then I will prepare basic draft of future challenges for our organization.
I have to mention also our website. It became very useful source of knowledge. We followed the goal that information you can find on our page can be useful for each firefighter. At the moment you can access all material in 5 different languages.
Finally, I want to thank everybody for great work, the colleagues in EC, the National Committees, the Commissions and working groups, the CTIF Office, the Associated Members and everybody else who has been working hard for a better CTIF.
Milan Dubravac
President CTIF