Debate: Natural disasters during the summer  - Impacts of natural disasters in Europe due to climate change
Date: TUESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2021
Speaker: Elisa Ferreira
Language: EN

First, climate change and its impact and its devastating effect is here. It’s not something in books or of the future. Second, we have got to act. Thirdly, we have a lot of expressions of gratitude to be shared in relation to all those that helped in these circumstances.  Now we go to what we can do in relation to it, and, in fact, I go back to my three points. First, the important thing is to distinguish what is emergency support from the Union and what is the reconstruction after the crisis. In terms of the emergency support, what we saw was a substantial number of positive examples. We have to work on when things apparently didn’t work so well, combining the EU Civil Protection Mechanism with the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS). This is something on which we have got to build and have got to work.  Second, we have the EU Solidarity Fund. We know that crises and natural disasters are only going to increase, and of course, we have got to make sure that the fund has adequate resources in relation to the size of the damages and the frequency of the damages.  But let me recall that, for the time being, the situation that we have is not that the fund is being blocked by anything. There are 12 weeks during which Member States calculate the damage, and we are only talking about the costs of the emergency and recovery operations by public authorities. This is the structure of the fund. For the time being, we have only received the adding-up of these costs from Cyprus, but we know that other countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, are making their calculations of what the damage was. So this is 12 weeks. They are not exhausted yet. This will of course have an impact not only on the budget of 2021, but also of 2022. The budget of 2021 takes six weeks so we’ll see when it comes.  The Commission is also giving support, help and technical support to the Member States in the preparation of these portfolios, this collection of bills, in which they are asking for – or they will be asking for – support. There are of course thresholds and these thresholds try to give a proxy for supporting more those for which the damage is sufficiently big. So there are thresholds and these thresholds to activate the Solidarity Fund are of either 0.6% of the gross national income of the country or 1.5% of the average gross domestic product of the affected regions. These are the thresholds from where the solidarity is considered to be needed and Member States are making exactly this preparation. But, third, we have got to bear in mind that what we are talking about with our Fit for 55 and our climate law is to embody these objectives and this need for preventive measures, and not only repair measures, when we are preparing our plans. Now we have a huge financial support to build back better, and the content of building back better has got to include a substantial amount of these preventive climate-related projects. So, at this moment, we have the recovery plans of all the Member States, we have REACT-EU that is already in operation and can be used for repairing, and we have the Cohesion Funds 2021—2027 that are being prepared by Member States.  So I also call on you, as representatives of citizens, to make sure that, when we are preparing – and we have funds like never before – to recover from the pandemic, we recover with a better and a more robust resilience for our economy and for our citizens. In fact, everything that we are talking about is core to the plans that we’ll be receiving from Member States. Only one of these plans has already been approved. That is the Greek one. All the others are in preparation, so it’s the right moment, in fact and in practice, to build back better. Thank you very much. We’ll take very seriously on board, in the future and in our immediate discussions, everything that you had suggested, including, as the Chair of the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) has suggested, to have a special fund. Let’s see how we can organise ourselves with the available instruments in order to reach the best in the answer and preparation for a climate that is more and more aggressive.