Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-14-Speech-1-174"
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"en.20090914.25.1-174"2
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Mr President, I should like to thank the honourable members of Parliament for their extremely constructive contributions to this evening’s debate and for the excellent ideas they have proposed.
As far as the Solidarity Fund is concerned, I have heard – and it is right – that it needs greater flexibility. In fact, it needs to be able to react as quickly as possible, because the precise philosophy of the Solidarity Fund is to cover emergencies or part of the emergencies caused by disasters.
It is therefore logical that the Commission should act immediately and that the Member States, through either their central or regional administrations, should take immediate action so that monies are disbursed. Moreover, there is also the clause in the European Solidarity Fund that works must be carried out within one year of disbursement. This is logical, but needs greater flexibility.
To close – and I am sorry that I do not have more time to reply to the very specific issues raised – I should just like to say before I forget, because a number of speakers referred to the economic recovery programmes, that they are indeed a very good idea, because there are numerous benefits from including projects to prevent disasters which we can more or less expect to happen next year as well – as previously said, we discuss these matters every year – both because they will generate economic activity and create more jobs and because they will prevent damage costing millions of euros in restoration works. They are therefore investments which will have a multiple return and will, of course, prevent the human cost of disasters.
Finally, I should like to point out that, while the risk of forest fires or other disasters, such as floods, earthquakes and even military intervention – because the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection has intervened for floods, earthquakes and forest fires and to move populations, such as after the conflict in Lebanon, and we have assisted here with great success – cannot be completely removed, it can nonetheless be reduced through our cooperation and a better collective response to such disasters. The Commission undertakes to strengthen the Community contribution to prevention, readiness, response and restoration of disasters, in order to protect citizens and the environment.
May I thank Parliament once again for its active support for the need to improve disaster management for the benefit of all European citizens.
Emergencies often involve a high human, financial and environmental cost. In future, due to climate change, as many members emphasised, we shall probably have to deal with more and bigger disasters – not only forest fires, which will not be confined to southern Europe and will start to appear in central and even in northern Europe – and a different type of disaster, such as floods. We therefore need to constantly strengthen and improve European disaster management resources, which have now clearly proven their added value.
This has also been confirmed by the fires this summer, which reminded us that the Community needs to improve not only its capacity to respond to natural disasters, but also its ability to prevent them, as numerous speakers emphasised this evening. I should remind the House here that in February, the Commission presented a communication on the prevention of natural and man-made disasters in which it formulated certain proposals.
We are awaiting the European Parliament’s and the Council’s comments on this communication. I believe that the new Parliament will not delay its response, which we expect to receive in February. We believe that they will give us the political incentive, as will a resolution on this from the forthcoming conference, to proceed with the necessary work in this direction.
As numerous speakers, starting with Mrs Podimata, raised the issue, I should also highlight the issue of climate change and the need for adaptation and the proposed review of the Community strategy on forests, the aim of which is to address climate-related aspects. This, too, will provide an opportunity to examine issues relating to forest fires. I should add here that this Commission communication is very important, as is the communication we issued last week on financing for the agreement on climate change which we expect to emerge from Copenhagen, with a large sum being made available for financing adaptation to climate change in developing countries. Funds will be directed to the works needed so that the countries which suffer the repercussions of climate change without having contributed to the greenhouse effect will be able to deal with those repercussions.
In fact, I have proposed that we should not simply wait for 2013 to start this action, but should start it at once, in 2010. I hope that the European Council will agree, either on 17 September or in October, that money should be provided to start works immediately, so that these countries can see that the European Union and the developed countries really mean what they propose and what they say.
A lot of other, very important points were made – and may I say that they were all right – about the role of Community financing. The Community mechanism for rural development and the European Regional Development Fund offer the facility to support national prevention measures. The Commission will use the facilities provided by the Community Solidarity Fund to support restoration efforts in the Member States.
Having heard that intervention by the Commission should be immediate, I should clarify the following here: there are two issues and it was not clear which of the two was being referred to. One is mobilisation of the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection and the other is activation of the Solidarity Fund. As far as mobilisation of the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection is concerned, I can tell you that mobilisation is immediate, in real time. I would cite the recent example of the fires which broke out in Greece: within an hour of receiving an official request from the Greek Government, Italian aircraft had taken off in order to be on site ready for deployment the following day. Mobilisation is therefore immediate.
As I said in my first speech, we were the first to send specialists to the scene of the disaster in the cases of the tsunami and hurricane Katrina. We received a great deal of praise for the action taken through the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection and this confirms both the work achieved over recent years and the potential which it has, provided that it has the remit and the resources – especially the financial resources – to be able to extend its work for the benefit of the European Union, citizens, environmental protection and the property of European citizens."@en1
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