Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-03-Speech-2-162"
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"en.20020903.6.2-162"2
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"Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, the reason for my intervention is, of course, the various disasters that have recently befallen the Member States of the European Union – the devastating floods, droughts and fires.
This summer, the torrential rains that lashed Germany and Austria as well as the Czech Republic and Romania, have caused incalculable damage. In human terms, first of all, with the loss of dozens of human lives and thousands injured or missing and families made homeless. There has been material damage too, with considerable damage to infrastructures, with roads and bridges destroyed, fields of crops flooded and the destruction of centuries-old cultural heritage.
First of all, and I feel sure that I speak on behalf of all my fellow Members, I wish to use this forum to praise the total commitment and the mobilisation of the emergency services, fire brigades, police, soldiers and volunteers. On the eve of the gloomy conclusions of the Johannesburg Summit, the European Union is already facing the consequences of climate change and of the failure to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.
For me and for my country, the European Union means solidarity, both with the Member States, and with the candidate countries. The European Union must, therefore, bring into play all the mechanisms and financial means at its disposal to help the affected areas. Aid must be direct and immediate, because the victims will not be sympathetic to bureaucracy and administrative delays.
I wish, therefore, to state my unequivocal support for establishing, in the short term, an exceptional budget line to deal with this type of disaster, redirecting Structural Funds that have already been allocated, bearing the new situation in mind, and for freeing up credits granted under the pre-accession programmes. In the medium term, I am also in favour of the Commission proposal to create a special assistance fund for natural, technological and environmental disasters with a value of no less than EUR one billion. This fund would enable us to provide a rapid response in the event of disasters in the broadest sense of the term. I suggest that the sums in this fund that are not spent during the current budget year be added to those of coming years, so as to strengthen it. There would consequently be a greater year-on-year ability to respond. Furthermore, the size of the freed-up funding should take account of not only the extent of the disaster, but also of the prosperity of the regions affected."@en1
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