Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-18-Speech-2-153"
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"en.20000118.6.2-153"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, you have just been speaking about the human, ecological and social consequences of yet another oil slick which has reached French shores. We are now speaking – and personally, I am very happy that we are – about the consequences of an historic storm, a veritable hurricane which affected France, and also the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria in the same period.
Powers for programming actions and selecting priorities have, as you know, been devolved to each State. Each government will therefore, under the conditions that I have just stated, have to establish its priorities and make choices. They will probably have new priorities, in order to take into account the consequences of this storm or of the oil slick. It is up to the governments of the countries concerned to distribute Community financial support among the various regions eligible for Structural Funds, and therefore to propose to the Commission plans for action to be carried out at grass roots level.
In order to be more specific though, by way of an example, I would like to remind you that all of these programmes in devastated areas will be able to finance the restoration of our historical and cultural heritage, areas of economic activity, and industrial or trading areas. They could also finance the channels necessary for the flow of raw materials and industrial products, for port infrastructures – both commercial and leisure ports, the infrastructure of airports involved in business travel or tourism, productive industrial investments, aid to businesses, and historical and cultural heritage for tourism as well as training for employees qualified under the European Social Fund.
The Commission is therefore entirely at the disposal of each of the Member States, in order to adapt, to rearrange this programming to the best effect. I would like to stress that this also applies to those who suffered the effects of the other storms at the beginning of December in Denmark, the United Kingdom and in Sweden. I know that Parliament adopted a previous resolution to this effect, on 16 December last year.
I hope you do not mind if I stress, even though I have already said it twice, that this applies to Greece too, with regard to the consequences of the earthquake which occurred at the beginning of September, in accordance with Objective 1 of the Cohesion Fund.
Ladies and gentlemen, my colleague, Franz Fischler, adopts the same approach with regard to rural development. Following the reform of the common agricultural policy which your Parliament approved last year, measures for rural development can, for the first time, be cofinanced throughout the Union’s rural areas by the ‘Guarantee’ section of the EAGGF. France will therefore benefit by EUR 760 million per year, Germany by EUR 700 million and Austria by EUR 423 million. This aid is available for devastated regions and is not constrained by the zoning which I am bound to apply under Objective 2. Of the measures eligible under the EAGGF Guarantee section, I would like to mention restoring agricultural and forestry production potential which has been damaged, reforestation, infrastructures for country roads and infrastructures for prevention and protection such as dykes and warning systems. In this context, probably the most special case is that of the timber industry, which has been affected particularly badly by these storms and to which we will be devoting all our attention, in both economic and environmental terms. I would like to say that the EAGGF could also allocate a Community cofinancing grant for the storage of wood.
Furthermore, in the fisheries sector, it is also possible to employ the structural instruments for cofinancing grants. France would thus have access to EUR 225 million for the period 2000-2006. Community aid will thus be able to contribute to compensating fishermen and boat-owners for the temporary cessation of their activities in case of unforeseen events, up to a maximum of two months per year. It is also conceivable that the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance, FIFG, will be able to provide assistance which could be used for standard investment projects. I am thinking here of fish-farming equipment, community facilities, restructuring, developing fish-farming sites, equipping fishing harbours, modernising boats, and I have already discussed these matters with Franz Fischler. Finally, following consultation of course with my colleague, Mario Monti, the Commission would like to underline the fact that State aid earmarked for making good the damage caused by natural disasters or other extraordinary events can be considered compatible with the common market. It would therefore, in these circumstances, be authorised by the Commission.
We can, then, embark on various courses of action straight away, for example in the area of energy, within the framework of the Trans-European Energy Networks. I know that where the transmission of energy is concerned, there are many technical problems, particularly in the transmission of very high voltage energy. Nevertheless, looking back to my quite recent time as Minister for the Environment in France, when I campaigned for underground lines, I would like to point out, as one of you did a while ago, that in this area as in many others, prevention is much cheaper than a cure. I therefore hope that the Member States will vote in favour of laying telegraph, telephone and electricity networks underground, when this is technically possible, and that they are encouraged to do so.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, covers the Community instruments, which offer many opportunities for very practical intervention. The European Union does not and will not do everything. It can nevertheless do a great deal, on condition that we are able to make use of these instruments, that you keep us informed and that Member States are able, in the days following these storms, to set out their priorities and to make choices. It is therefore very important that this House, as well as the Commission, passes this information and this practical expression of solidarity on to all partners involved and to the people concerned and affected. As far as I am concerned, I shall endeavour to do that myself this week, when I visit, the day after tomorrow, two French departments which have been particularly badly affected by the storms: Charente-Maritime, affected both by the hurricane and the oil slick, and Creuse. I shall also present today’s decision on Objective 2. Tomorrow, 19 January, my colleague Michaele Schreyer will visit one of Germany’s most devastated regions, the Black Forest, in the state of Baden-Württemberg.
With thanks for your patience, I should like to conclude this presentation, Mr President, by mentioning a subject close to my heart. This is one of the lessons we should learn from these disasters, which do not always have natural causes, but which often do. We are convinced that such disasters reinforce the need for better coordination within the Union of each State’s resources for repairs, emergency aid and civil protection. The Commission already has a unit for the coordination of civil protection, for which my colleague, Margot Wallström, is responsible. This unit, I might add, worked well when it had to deal with the oil slick, to find boats, arrange protection for beaches, machines for cleaning oil-covered birds to the extent that it is possible. The resources of 11 European countries were employed here, a fact which is sometimes forgotten, and which justifies the tribute I wanted to pay to the spontaneous solidarity shown by all European countries.
Nevertheless, I think that we must go even further. President Prodi, Margot Wallström and I are convinced that we need to find a more systematic way of developing a European intervention strategy, which is based on existing mechanisms in each country, on specialised units, such as fire brigades, vaccination and civil protection teams, mountain rescue dog teams and many more. Members of these units, whilst staying in their own countries, would undergo a common course of training. If needed, they could be mobilised, both within the European Union, as we have seen with this storm and the earthquake in Greece, and outside the Union, as happened in the cases of Turkey and South and Central America, following the tragic events that have taken place there. This really is an opportunity to create a genuine European civil protection force.
When speaking about the consequences of such accidents or such terrible weather conditions, we are not only talking about the damage to the environment and to property, we are also talking – and this is a point I wish to make too – about the consequences of the storm, as well as of the oil slick, for men, women and families who, as Mrs de Palacio said a moment ago, are seriously traumatised, wounded, bruised, demoralised, the weakest of which are desperate. I have seen this myself.
Today, we have a long way to go, even if the Helsinki European Council did take a step forward in this direction and Margot Wallström’s services are working on extending the role of the ‘search and rescue task force’. For the moment, of course, the Commission has neither the manpower nor the financial resources to take responsibility for such a task. We think, though, that with Margot Wallström and under the authority of President Romano Prodi, this is one of the lessons that we will be learning from this series of disasters, natural or otherwise, which have had such tragic consequences. In terms of efficiency and also of political clarity, this task force would be a symbol of our idea of the European Union. As far as I am concerned, I intend, within the Commission, to promote this idea as one of the lessons to be learned from this disaster.
I really think that today we are seeing an expression of European solidarity, a solidarity demonstrated by words of moral support, but which is above all human. This is the solidarity that I would like to express on behalf of the whole Commission and, particularly, within the Commission, on behalf of my colleagues who have not forgotten their roots or their citizenship: Franz Fischler from Austria, Michaele Schreyer and Günther Verheugen from Germany, and Pascal Lamy and myself from France. This expression of feeling is to complement that already shown by the national authorities of these countries and by the tremendous surge of generosity and kindness that has been shown. And as we are talking about Europe, I would also like to take my hat off to the spontaneity and the willingness of the volunteers from the public electricity and telephone services, to the firemen and the road-workers who came spontaneously from all over Europe to help to re-open roads and to restore electricity and telephones. In some parts of France, some families have only had their telephones and electricity working again since yesterday or the day before.
At the request of President Prodi, the Commission has held its first talks on this whole issue, a discussion during its first meeting of the year and now, as the President asked us to, I would like to tell you the results of our work to provide every response that the Union can muster in terms of rebuilding those parts of our economic, social and cultural heritage that were affected. This must be done within the limits of the regulations and the budget, having expressed our human and moral solidarity.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Commission will therefore make use of every instrument it has in order to help the affected Member States in this reconstruction and to provide any possible aid to the people and businesses affected. This will be done in order to complement and to top up the support and aid which have already been decided on by the national and regional authorities. As you know, the Commission has several instruments and tools which can provide aid for this rehabilitation and reconstruction effort and we intend to use all of these instruments, with the same desire to help, which Mrs de Palacio expressed when she spoke of the lessons to be learned from the Erika disaster.
As far as the structural policy is concerned, I am personally going to look into how we can use the current decisions on the new generation of strategies for economic development which will be implemented over the next seven years. I will also look into how the appropriations, which have already been allocated, particularly to regions of rural, industrial and urban conversion and to fishing areas, that is, all the regions covered by Objective 2, can help this reconstruction. The Objective 2 zoning was stopped by the Commission after consulting the various governments. In Germany’s case, the Commission’s decision was taken in December and today, the Commission has stopped the Objective 2 zoning plan, not only for Luxembourg and Sweden, but also for France and Austria.
In France’s case, where the damage is objectively the most extensive, the total available appropriations for the new Objective 2 are EUR 5.4 billion for the period 2000-2006. A preliminary study by the Commission services shows that on the basis of a financial allocation set up in proportion to the eligible population, 70% of people affected by the storm may benefit from aid eligible under Objective 2. The 69 devastated French departments could thus receive around EUR 4.1 billion over the next seven years. For Germany and Austria, the corresponding total sums are respectively EUR 3 billion for Germany and EUR 600 million for Austria.
I would also like to point out that the devastated areas which do not feature on this new zoning plan – and unfortunately there are some – which are not covered by Objective 2, but which were eligible under the previous Objective 2 and Objective 5b zoning, could also have access to appropriations available in the new programming period as provisional support. I would therefore like to suggest the most straightforward way in which structural appropriations could broadly contribute to the economic rehabilitation of devastated areas. Of course, it is not a question of providing emergency aid since, as you know very well, two years ago the meagre appropriations available in the European budget under emergency aid were discontinued. It is a question of repair and lasting restoration in the context of the programmes currently in preparation and this, in my view, is our most important task."@en1
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