Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-03-Speech-1-081"
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"en.20070903.16.1-081"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost please allow me, on behalf of the ITS Group, to express my condolences and support for the families of the victims and for the Greek people as a whole.
Sixty-three people dead, others disappeared, villages destroyed, 200 000 hectares burned, as my colleagues have already mentioned, tens of thousands of heads of cattle burned, with all the consequences this entails for the national economy, and local economies in particular, as yet unassessed: this is the sad result of the forest fires that have ravaged Greece since the end of August.
The European Union, as usual, will be taking out its chequebook to assist with the rebuilding work and, as usual, it is using a tragic situation to propose an extension of its powers by creating a permanent European civil protection body. This, however, would have contributed nothing to the solidarity of the European countries that sent helicopters, water bomber units and fire-fighters to assist their Greek colleagues, as they did two years ago in Portugal, and as they will do in years to come whenever a Member State requires their assistance.
As on every occasion the European Union is concealing its own responsibilities. Forest fire prevention policy has no autonomous financing and finds itself henceforth floundering around in the Life programme, which focuses on training, communication and statistical monitoring of fires in the small element on this issue.
The Greeks are angry and they have every right to be, because the scale of this disaster is obviously the result of a number of human malfunctions: neglected undergrowth, poorly trained fire-fighters, insufficient facilities, no coordination of operations, inadequate town planning policies, calls for assistance arriving too late and, in particular, no prevention facilities. This is all the more staggering in the case of a Mediterranean country where fires and drought are common occurrences, and which was going through its third heat wave since the beginning of the year. There was no realisation that, in due consideration of the climate characteristics, there ought to have been a genuine air force of water bombers.
It is not, however, only Mr Karamanlis’s Government that must be singled out here, even if its wait-and-see attitude during the initial days was particularly scandalous: only 1 000 fire-fighters, only 440 soldiers. Certain parties must be singled out, and the blame also lies with its socialist predecessors, the PASOK. New Democracy and its allies are collectively responsible for the insufficient human and material fire-fighting resources, but also for the absence of something fit to be called a fire prevention policy.
The terrible recent catastrophe in Greece merely points, unfortunately, to a failure in the system, and in a few days the Greek people will have the chance to chastise a compromised political class and choose others to make political decisions. Let us hope they make the right choice!"@en1
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