European aid for flood victims
The European Union announces aid worth 10 billion euros for flood-hit member states, including Romania.
Bogdan Matei, 20.09.2024, 14:00
Dozens of people have been killed or are missing in the floods caused by storm Boris in central and eastern Europe. While rain has mostly stopped, flash floods still pose a threat to homesteads in these regions. The floods have caused significant material damage estimated at billions of euros, according to an analysis made by an investment company on international stock exchanges.
Early estimates in Romania put the damage at over 1 billion euros, while others say this is an optimistic figure, expecting it to be double or even three times that much. A World Bank report published last year estimated the annual average losses caused by flooding in Romania at 1.7 billion euros. In the recent floods, seven people were killed and more than 6,500 homes damaged. The government has allocated around 20 million euros in immediate aid for the flood-hit families. Although Romania has an obligatory insurance scheme in place, the insurance rate in the worst-hit regions in Galaţi and Vaslui, in the south-east, is 7-8%, three times lower than the national average of 23%.
The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday announced aid worth 10 billion euros out of the Union’s Cohesion Fund for the flood-hit countries in Central Europe, including Romania. She said the European Union has two potential sources of aid, the Cohesion Fund and the Solidarity Fund, which it can use to help finance repair and reconstruction work.
Also on Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution in which it voices its concern for the increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events in Europe and around the world, as well as its dissatisfaction with the recent budget cuts in the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. In its document on the devastating floods in Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, MEPs are calling for sufficient and upgraded resources in order to increase preparedness and improve capacity building, especially in the view of the next EU multi-annual budget. They also called for the Solidarity Fund to be “commensurate with the increasing number and severity of natural disasters across Europe”, urged the Commission to speed up the distribution of funds to the flood-hit regions and asked for other types of technical and financial aid to also be made available.
In the last 30 years alone, the media have noted, flooding has affected 5.5 million people in Europe, causing almost 3,000 deaths and economic damages of over 170 billion euros.
