Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-18-Speech-4-156"
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"en.20031218.5.4-156"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to pay tribute to the victims, their families and all who have lost everything, and to the extraordinary work done in the rescue operations by men and women, municipal employees, firefighters, police, military personnel and volunteers.
The provisional toll of this disaster is particularly high: 30 departments are affected, eight of them severely, in particular Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse and Gard. So far as the population is concerned, seven people have died and 32 500 have been displaced or taken to safety.
We might wonder about the origin of these tragedies and their frequency. Some will mention global warming or masses of hot air from the Mediterranean colliding with masses of cold air over my own region, Roussillon. But what can we do about it? Others will mention man’s mania for urbanisation, always wanting to build more at the expense of the countryside and indifferent to its population. However, forecasters considered this bad weather exceptional because it combined a number of factors: its duration – almost four days – its geographical extent and its intensity.
I would like to highlight the unacceptable administrative inertia of the authorities in the face of the revelations made in the Lyon technical assistance office’s November 2002 report. That report in fact made a full diagnosis of the dangers of the river and recommended a number of measures to reduce the damage caused by any flooding. But that study, to which many people contributed and which cost EUR 3.5 million, has remained a dead letter and failed to worry the authorities concerned, or at least to do so soon enough.
Once again this bad weather has demonstrated the passivity of men in the face of disasters which, remember, cost seven people their lives. No notice was taken of the strong signal given more than a year ago highlighting the urgent need for a harmonious development of the rural environment taking the whole of the territory and its inhabitants into account. The French Government has released EUR 24 million to repair the dykes of the Rhône delta, which gave way at several points under the effect of the rising waters. But that sum is already proving inadequate on the ground.
I hope that the European Union’s Solidarity Fund, which was set up after the devastating floods of August 2002, will help, at European level, to provide swift and fair compensation for the victims and enable them to resume a normal life. But for how long? Some are making their third damage claims and doing their third clean up in the space of a few months. I was interested in what the Commissioner outlined just now, in particular about using the Structural Funds, but I second what Mrs Grossetête and Mr Onesta said regarding their limits.
Of course the damage must be repaired, but should we not be immediately starting major prevention works for this Mediterranean region that has been stricken regularly in recent years? Nîmes, Vaison-la-Romaine, Aramon, Lezignanais, Narbonnais, Minervois, Rennes-les-Bains, Couiza, Estagel, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, and these days Arles, Marseille, Montpellier, eloquent names and images, unbearable tragedies, much damage and loss of life.
This is becoming unacceptable in an age of satellite warning and forecasting, surveillance radar, specialist services and, moreover, the massive mechanisation that ought to make protective works possible. The Roman aqueduct at Ansignan, close to where I live, the better known pont du Gard and many other testimonies to human genius have withstood every assault. How can it be that the structures of the last century are not sufficiently reliable? It is no longer the time for words but for action, with the necessary resources, even if the scale of them should be exceptional. A Europe that believes in solidarity must stop letting its citizens die for lack of precautions and prevention. That, it seems to me, is a priority and a must."@en1
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