Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-01-Speech-1-045"
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Mr President, honourable Members of the European Parliament, the summer of 2003, which is not yet over, has in many ways been a tragic one. A short while ago, you called for a minute’s silence to be observed in memory of the entire United Nations team murdered in Baghdad and there are other indications of this difficult and sometimes tragic summer that we have just been through.
As a result of the heatwave, which contributes to or accelerates fires, many regions, in southern Europe in particular, have experienced other types of economic and human tragedy. I am thinking in particular of the drought, which some of you will probably mention. This phenomenon has also caused considerable damage. By way of example, in northern Italy alone, the damage to milk production is estimated at EUR 70 million and the damaged to crops and fodder at EUR 380 million. In the specific case of drought, of course, Europe’s response cannot be based on the Solidarity Fund, which was not designed for that purpose. Just to remind you, this fund is intended to address disasters that do not receive any form of aid. Where the drought is concerned, and particularly in the context of the common agricultural policy, we had and we still have means with which to provide assistance. On this subject, I wish to recall that at the initiative of my colleague Franz Fischler, the Commission adopted, at the beginning of July, a number of measures to help producers in all of the affected regions. In particular, these measures involve the use of vegetative cover as set-aside land, using some intervention stocks of cereals and rice to feed livestock, the possibility of increasing advance payments to 80% in the beef sector and anticipating some payments in the beef, sheep or principal crop sectors.
The Commission is, of course, willing to examine as rapidly as possible any eligible requests for State aid or modifications to the rural development programme that Member State governments affected by the drought might submit.
My third point concerns civil protection. I had the opportunity, the other day, in Castelo Branco, to meet some voluntary firefighters who have done a fantastic job and wherever such disasters take place, we see a surge of solidarity, cohesion and generosity. The many emergencies that we have experienced and are still experiencing, however, raise the issue of coordinating resources for civil protection at European level. We do have, in the field of civil protection, a Community response centre established by a Council decision in October 2001 and which has the task of implementing European cooperation in the event of an emergency. This is principally a centre for coordination and specialist knowledge which has been very active where fires are concerned – as it was in the case of the
and the
shipwrecks – and which has made use of all the means available to it under its mandate. Experience has shown, however, particularly this summer in Portugal, that this centre’s current mandate does not, unfortunately, allow it to provide all the assistance that is needed when a major disaster occurs. This is why the Commission, at the behest of my colleague Mrs Margot Wallström, will, by the end of September, present the fruit of its discussions on how best to address this situation and will submit proposals. This, I believe, is an area in which we must be more ambitious, by discussing the financial and operational means needed to facilitate more effective intervention, on the part of this centre in particular.
Whatever proposal or measure we submit, I would remind you that civil protection generally remains a national and often even a regional competence and consequently nothing can be done unless the Council of Ministers asks the Commission to submit a project. I must also say that your House will also have to tell us, as some of its Members have already done, what it wants and how far it wishes us to go in this field.
I have talked about the Solidarity Fund, the drought and the state of our forthcoming proposals in the field of civil protection. I would like to conclude my talk by referring to what is, for me, a very long-held conviction. I have always believed that in any discussion about natural disasters – knowing, once again, that they do not all have natural causes, and there was nothing natural about the
and the
whatever the truth of the matter, I have always believed that, in all of these cases, prevention is less costly than repair. I therefore wish to highlight the efforts at prevention at all levels: at global level – I shall refer to this again in my summing-up, in the context of Kyoto – and at local level, on the ground at regional or national level. This is why when in a few months we conduct the mid-term review of the regional policy programmes, I shall pay very close attention to the requests made by States or regions for assistance under the Structural Funds 2000-2006 programming, for all aspects of prevention. I wish to go further, however; beyond what we have done and beyond what we are currently doing in order, once we have concluded our discussions, in the proposals that the Commission will be making on future regional and cohesion policies, to make disaster prevention measures more or less compulsory in all regional programmes. I also hope that together we can find a way of stepping up the budget effort for renewable energies or for clean forms of transport in regional or national programmes.
Furthermore, since I am talking about preventive action, we are all aware that to be able to prevent, we need to understand, to be aware and to be well informed. On this subject, geographical information is a major element of risk prevention and management. The Commission has developed a European information system on forest fires. This system enables a map of fire risks that covers all of Europe’s territory to be plotted on a daily basis. This now forms an integral part of the Community support mechanism for the civil protection forest services in the Member States. Lastly, I wish to emphasise that this system also enables a rapid and reliable assessment to be made of the damage caused by forest fires. This is how we were able, last week, to estimate the surface area of Portugal destroyed by fires to be 400 000 hectares.
To conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I shall refer to the most important, the most difficult, and the most necessary form of prevention, which is global prevention, in other words, the action taken by our Member States and by the Union on climate change. If, as all climate experts predict, it is increasingly likely that the current process of global warming will lead to major changes in rainfall distribution and in drought conditions, it is crucial for the Community and for each of its Members to remain at the forefront of the fight against climate change and for their actions in this field to set an example. No country and no bloc of developed countries such as the Union is in a position to solve a problem of this magnitude on its own or within its own borders. This is why the Union would like the Kyoto protocol, which has already been ratified by 113 countries representing more than two-thirds of the world’s population to enter into force as quickly as possible. The Union has already adopted several measures in order to achieve the targets set out in this protocol. It has also incorporated environmental principles into its strategy and its decision-making process.
Having said that, ladies and gentlemen, as you well know, the commitment or the involvement of each Member State is not equal, despite being crucial. The most recent data on emissions show that ten out of the fifteen current Member States are still a long way from achieving their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On 22 July, the Commission started court proceedings to ensure compliance with European Union legislation designed to improve air quality in Europe. As you know, we have also adopted a proposal for a regulation intended to reduce certain fluorinated greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal represents a new phase for action undertaken by the European Union to fulfil the obligations imposed on us by the Kyoto Protocol. Lastly – and Mr Franz Fischler can tell you more about this matter than I – the new environmental and ecological requirements are now being taken into account in the guidelines for the common agricultural policy.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in any discussion of natural disasters, of all the things that have happened this summer, we will inevitably touch on the economy, on the hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests destroyed, on a farm economy that has suffered a massive blow, the consequences of which will be felt for a long time, but also and perhaps most importantly, we are bound to talk about the men and women whose property and lives have been affected. I could not end my statement without referring to the memory of several thousand of my fellow countrymen and women who have died as a result of the exceptional heat that we have experienced in the last few weeks. Perhaps for this reason too we should attempt to understand the particular situation of each of our Member States, consider how we can further coordinate our actions, our assessment instruments and probably also make more substantial progress in the field of public health in Europe.
As you know, together with Klaus Hänsch and Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, I have long been involved, on your behalf, in the work of the Convention, in the Praesidium and in the Convention itself. Together with many other representatives of Parliament, we have tried to improve the texts in the field of European action on public health. The text of the Constitution might denote some progress, but I am not convinced that this text goes as far as it should when we see the genuinely European dimension of some disasters. Consequently, even if this subject appears to be somewhat removed from the fires in Portugal, I should like to mention, in terms of the heatwave and other major scourges affecting the health of Europe’s citizens, the need to go further in our common and even Community action, in the field of public health.
Last Thursday, I visited Portugal in order to spend several hours flying over the devastated regions of Santarém, Portalegre and Castelo Branco. What confronted me was a desolate sight, the scale of which my colleagues Mrs Diamantopoulou and Mr Vitorino had already seen a few days earlier: the desolation with which I was confronted also reminded me of the sight that met me almost a year ago to the day, in Germany, the consequence of different events. Indeed, the summer of 2002 was also a tragic one for a great deal of Central Europe, for the
of eastern Germany, for the Czech Republic, Austria and even for France.
Faced with such environmental disasters, which do not all have natural causes, as we well know, in the face of their human consequences – in Portugal, eighteen people lost their lives in these fires – faced with their economic consequences – hundreds of thousands of hectares have been destroyed and, as a result, thousands of farmers are out of work in central Portugal, the country’s poorest region – faced with these thousands of people who can no longer work unless we find jobs for them straightaway and who will be tempted to migrate towards the towns or to the coast, we must take action on all fronts and at all levels. Given the circumstances, it goes without saying that the level we represent here, and by that I mean you, Parliament, we, the Commission, and the Council, is the appropriate level at which to act. I therefore thank you once again, Mr President and I thank the European Parliament and all the political groups for giving the Commission this opportunity to bring you up to date on what it is doing, on what it intends to do and on what it has still to do at European level.
The first tool or instrument with which we can provide assistance is the European Union Solidarity Fund. I recall, ladies and gentlemen, what was more or less my first speech here to you. As many of you know, I have long been interested in the environment and in ecology and, in October 1999, just after being appointed Commissioner, I had to go to Greece in order, Mr President, to assess the damage caused by an earthquake. I said at the time that there was no exceptional instrument available that would enable us to react to exceptional situations, to tragedies, to exceptional natural disasters. The only responses we could provide were the usual, run-of-the-mill ones. It took last year’s disaster, the floods in Central Europe, for the Solidarity Fund to be created. The initiative adopted by the Commission on this matter was supported immediately and, I must say, extremely efficiently by this House: I well recall the work undertaken by your rapporteurs, Mr Rolf Berend and Mr Ralf Walter, who gave us their support.
This Fund was set up in three months. It has a fund reserve of EUR one billion per year and is now our main form of assistance for remedying – a little later I shall say a few words about prevention – the damage caused by fires such as those seen in Portugal or those still raging in France. Not only was the Fund itself set up extremely rapidly, the response that we provide is also extremely rapid. Portugal’s request reached the Commission on 14 August and last week, in other words, two weeks later, we provided an emergency sum of EUR 31.6 million for aid, temporary accommodation, energy supply, repairs to basic infrastructures and for animal feed, because everything has been devastated.
This year, the Solidarity Fund has received five requests and my staff have accepted four of them (the eruption of Etna in Italy, the earthquake in the Molise region, the shipwreck of the
and, of course, Portugal) totalling EUR 88 million. In 2002, having been in existence for only three or four months, the Fund gave Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria aid totalling EUR 728 million. Where Germany is concerned, I can inform Parliament that this Thursday I will be travelling to Dresden, in Saxony, an area I visited a year ago. I will see, observe and assess the way in which European funds intended to remedy the flood damage have been used.
Ladies and gentlemen, in addition to this Solidarity Fund, which is earmarked for emergency measures that receive no European funding, we do have other forms of support, in particular for rebuilding devastated economies; this is the purpose of the Structural Funds and of the Cohesion Funds, which can be redeployed or reallocated, according to the requests made by governments. Consequently, Portugal informed us that it was going to request the redeployment or reallocation of Community structural funds to the value of EUR 182 million in order to address the reconstruction of the forestry and farming sectors.
As to the Structural Funds, Mr President, please allow me to digress a little: a short while ago, President Cox referred to the departure from this House of Luciano Caveri, who has been extremely important to you and to me, in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism. I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him and to thank him for the quality and the openness that have characterised our relations with that committee for several years.
Ladies and gentlemen, I now come to an idea that some of you will perhaps wish to raise: this is the idea that the Solidarity Fund criteria that we adopted jointly at the proposal of the Commission and which have been adjusted or modified by the Council need to be evaluated. I do not claim that these criteria, which we have been applying for a year and a half in a consistent, objective and impartial way to all disasters, are absolutely perfect. I shall, therefore, keep the option of assessing this Fund’s operation open – we will have to do so before 31 December 2006 – and, if necessary, to propose that its intervention criteria be modified."@en1
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