Debate: EU Day for the victims of the global climate crisis
Date: MONDAY, 12 JUNE 2023
Speaker: Margrethe Vestager
Language: EN

What you cannot change is that people are dying. Droughts are affecting Europe. They affected every part of Europe last summer. There were storms. There were floods. And it is already here – the wildfires. We talk about it as if it was another season. Now it starts earlier and it is more violent than it used to be. Even cutting our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 will not solve this problem. This is probably the best weather we can have – and it is bad news. In the future, we should expect more severe impacts on physical and mental health, greater damage to infrastructure, growing threats to our livelihoods. You know this just as well as I do. We know the numbers. We know what we committed to in Paris. We know our discussion about the percentages. But what we’re discussing today is the people. As always, the most vulnerable people are the most affected. If you are poor, if you have few resources, you’re most affected, and you’re also most affected in that respect that you may not have the resources to prepare, to protect yourself, to adjust. Preparing is not admitting defeat. It is doing what is necessary to cushion the unavoidable impacts that climate change already has. So, of course, there is a strategy for that – the EU adaptation strategy. We know what we have to do better, protecting our citizens, protecting the environment, protecting the economy. We already have so many of the tools to do so, and where we don’t have them, well, we act decisively to develop it. But no matter what we do, there will still be an impact. The extreme weather events, they will continue to take a toll on human life. That is why the Commission believes that the European Union can and should do more to bring this into focus. One of the ways of doing so is in the pure, obvious respect of those who have lost their lives. Because it is not just about the commitment in Paris, the number of percentages we will reduce our emissions, the degrees warmer that we see the sea and the air and the earth. It is about the sister and the brother, the siblings, the partner, the friend, the children that we all are. It is about people and the respect of the fact that we cannot protect everyone. We propose that we establish an annual EU day for the victims of the climate crisis on 15 July. This day was one of the worst days of the catastrophic flooding in Germany and in Belgium in 2021. Over 200 people lost their lives. These floods came just weeks after a deadly tornado in Czechia, and they were followed by deadly forest fires across southern Europe. You know the examples as well as I do. You also know that the list could continue. Especially in summer, we are confronted with extreme weather and its consequences. The day will commemorate the victims of all such natural disasters as we experience them across Europe, and it will serve as a stark reminder and a warning of the risks posed by the climate crisis. And of course, also a reminder not to let it happen, to be better prepared, to know what we are doing when this is the best weather that we can have. Sometimes it is difficult to commemorate and respect and honour lives being lost when it could have been prevented, because we are all part of it. But we didn’t prevent it, and the least we can do is to honour and respect those who lost their lives. They did nothing, nothing to deserve that. I hope to count on your strong support to promote the establishment of an EU day for the victims of the climate crisis. This is about people, the daughters, the sons, the sisters, the brothers, the partners, the friends, the people that we are. We need to remind ourselves that a climate crisis is something for the human in us.