EU plans disaster fund after devastating floods
Date: 30-Aug-02
Country: BRUSSELS
Author: Patrick Lannin and Tom Miles
Officials will also work on freeing up billions of euros in aid from reshuffling budgets to help Germany meet the costs of cleaning up after the disaster.
The floods in central Europe in August caused deaths, forced evacuations of homes and left widespread damage in historical cities such as Prague and Dresden.
The decision to form a disaster fund was taken to provide fast relief in the wake of any catastrophe.
"This will be an expression of European solidarity," Commission President Romano Prodi told a news conference.
At present, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has to scramble around to find money from other sources, usually by reallocating spending from the budget, which amounts to more than 98 billion euros for 2002.
Prodi said 500 million euros would initially go into the fund, which he expected to be available for disaster relief this year. The size could be doubled in future years, he added.
But the head of the European Parliament's budget committee, which must ultimately approve any such fund, said the EU legislature might prefer having one-off budgets for disasters.
A statement quoted budget chief Terry Wynn as saying that parliament "would rather support ad hoc actions to cover the costs of future floods or other natural catastrophes.
"Furthermore the unpredictability of natural disasters makes it questionable to freeze EU money in future budgets," he said.
Parliament has before thrown out the idea of disaster fund, rejecting the idea in 1997. It said that the amount, 10 million euros, was too small and rules to get funds were complicated.
FUND WON'T BUST BUDGET
Prodi said disaster relief money would be focused on emergency requirements, rebuilding water and electricity supplies and for social and transport needs.
"We need to tackle these problems decisively and quickly," Prodi said. The disaster fund would be available for current EU states as well as those negotiating entry, he said.
He added that the fund would not cause the EU budget to break the spending limit of 1.27 percent of EU gross domestic product, set at a summit in Berlin in 1999.
A Commission statement estimated the flood damage to Germany at 15 billion euros, to Austria at two billion euros, the Czech Republic two to three billion and 35 million euros for Slovakia.
The Commission said that the floods should make EU leaders reflect on how such disasters happen and the extent to which human intervention is responsible.
It said the Earth Summit on sustainable development, currently taking place in Johannesburg, should lead to concrete steps to promote the better use of land and water and cut greenhouse gases, believed by many scientists to affect the weather by creating global warming.
EU officials said Germany and Austria would also benefit from several billion euros more in spending from a reshuffle in funds used for regional aid and to develop roads and transport.
