Debate: Recent heat wave and drought in the EU
Date: THURSDAY, 7 JULY 2022
Speaker: Maroš Šefčovič
Language: EN

And I totally agree with Mr De Meo: this is not a problem for few but it is a problem for all Europeans. And I think that I also have to say that I am in full agreement with Mr Ştefănuță, Mr Biteau, Mr Ros Sempere, Mr Benefei and many others who been rightly triggering the alarm bells that, unfortunately, with the climate change through which we are going right now and in the next years and decades, that weather events are likely to happen more frequently in the future than in the past. And, therefore, your calls for attaching even more crucial importance to working together along the whole cycle of risk management, from prevention to preparedness, to work more on response, to build more resilience in our systems are absolutely correct. I can tell you that will be working with you on all of them. I think that we already learnt from the past and we developed the right tools and policies to address the broad spectrum of the risks. And we also have a funding which can help. But you are absolutely correct as well that, if you look at it through the experience of the last months, last years, we need to be able constantly reviewing, adjusting and adapting our policies. And, therefore, the call of Ms Rodríguez Ramos to work on disaster-resilience goals is absolutely correct. We are already working on that, and I think that here again will be working with you and with our Member States on how to make sure that we would proceed with better climate adaptation, with mitigation investments, especially in the most exposed regions, which we saw represented by the Members of the European Parliament who intervened this morning. And what we can do better through cohesion, cohesion funding, and base our next steps, not only on the past experience, but also on strengthened foresight and anticipation. Mr De Meo, Mr Barrena Arza, Ms Grapini have been asking: what can we do more on top of the better use of the Solidarity Fund – which I described in my introductory remarks is to be beefed up, to be accelerated? What kind of other compensatory measures could be put in place? The quick feedback I can give you is that we are talking with our Member States on the possibility which they have; and they can compensate farmers under the rural development programmes and they can ask to modify their national programmes as relevant. And this is already happening with several EU Member States. All of you make a strong reference to the climate change and to the need to be very ambitious in implementation of the European Green Deal. And I would like to reassure you that, for us, part of the Green Deal is not only reducing CO2 emissions. This is also part and parcel of our strategy: how to beef up our biodiversity strategy. If you simply see: if you will not restore biodiversity, the nature will simply push us hard to remind us that simply there are basic laws of physics, basics of how the how the earth is functioning. And we shouldn’t interfere with this natural cycle of events.  Therefore, just recently we presented a nature-protection package to make sure that our efforts are geared to restore and protect the ecosystems. And I know that this is of a big interest to the honourable Members of this House, and we are ready to work with you to further improve our approach and to make sure that we will deliver on this very important strategy. Ms Luena and Mr Motreanu have been highlighting the danger of potential desertification, not only in Europe but in the world. And, therefore, we just presented the soil strategy for 2030. And, in this strategy, we have actions to not only monitor the desertification in the EU, but we want also to step up with concrete actions both at home and globally. And coming back to the foresight, which, as you know, is part of my portfolio: again, the honourable Member has been right. There is very clear foresight that if the climate change would continue at the pace as it is right now, in a few decades, we might we might have 10% less arable land globally, which, of course would have very severe consequences, especially for the for the development of countries. If it comes to the emergencies, to the preparedness, to the drought, we have the ways how to respond to, in the short-term emergency measures through our use EUPM mechanisms and through our recently refurbished and upgraded EU-wide early warning systems. We already are working with some of our Member States who already adopted to drought-management plans for vulnerable rivers – this is the response to Mr Bogovič – and probably we have to learn from that experience how to do it for all relevant Member States where they face this very important challenge. But this is obviously not enough. And in the long run, what we need to do is to scale up better water use in agriculture. We have to look at sustainable soil management and the vegetation cover, and we have to invest, as it was said by many: drought-resistant crops and restore damaged areas. And if you allow me to conclude, I would like to appreciate the way how Mr Tajani, Mr Dorfmann Mr Sandere, Ms Luena highlighted that what we are discussing here today is not a narrow issue, that it has very strong horizontal impact on different policies we are discussing together. This is not only the issue of climate change, emergency measures or being better prepared for the future challenges. It has to do a lot with our common agricultural policy. It has to do a lot with the modern precision farming, with using new technologies, like drones, satellites for better anticipation prediction. But also for using these new technologies in this very important sector. And it has to do a lot with using our funds under research and innovation to make sure that we will deploy the best possible technologies, best approaches and the best crops for use in agriculture. To conclude, honourable Members, I would like to say that I hear you loud and clear: that you would like us to act swifter, faster, closer with you, closer with Member States, closer with the regions under pressure, and that we are ready to do so. And we will be discussing this with you, with the Member States to make sure they will be permanently upgrading our policy responses to this very important challenge. Thank you very much, Mr President, and thank very much, honourable Members, for this very important discussion.