The devastating effects of natural disasters make the international community development initiatives of all kinds to alleviate the shortcomings that, in the first moments, governments have for a prompt restoration of critical services and infrastructures and the protection of the population. All of them have the common denominator of achieving more effective coordination between all the actors involved – civil and military – in emergency management.

Spain has been a pioneer nation with the creation of the UME, since it has provided a solution to this problem, which has aroused the interest of other nations and international organizations, becoming a model when it comes to using the Armed Forces in emergency management.

The efficiency in all its interventions has made the UME an international reference unit. This idea has been reinforced by Royal Decree 1097/2011, which establishes the Protocol of Intervention of the Emergency Military Unit since it empowers the Minister of Defense "to dictate the provisions that are necessary to regulate the operating conditions that result of application to the participation of the UME in operations abroad”.

The unit has already done operations abroad, achieving United Nations certification for urban search and rescue (USAR) capacity, presenting the project in international forums, as well as strengthening ties of friendship with the Ibero-American countries.

The UME also participates, through the General Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergencies, in the Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union, with the means and capacities offered by Spain to the European modules of this mechanism. In February 2014, the administrative process by which new intervention modules and a list of experts were offered to the European Civil Protection Mechanism to respond to possible catastrophes within and outside the EU was completed, contributing, in this way, to standardization and interoperability with other European emergency teams, as well as to give the EMU external visibility in the event of a possible deployment in an operation led by the European Union.

The modules offered by the UME are urban search and rescue in average conditions, urban search and rescue in extreme conditions, search and rescue in situations of NBC-R contamination, aquatic search, and rescue, temporary emergency shelters, sampling, and detection. NBC-R, forest fire fighting from the ground, forest fire fighting from the ground using vehicles, flood containment, and flood rescue.