Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-180"
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"en.20020411.10.4-180"2
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"Mr President, I think that Mr Pomés has explained the situation: torrential rain in the Canaries and in south-eastern Spain, which has caused a great deal of damage, especially in the town of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where eight people died and 400 homes were lost, with many cars and much private property being destroyed.
From the Community point of view, the most striking feature, naturally, is this issue of climate change, which we addressed in our joint motion for a resolution, and the need to comply with the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, in the aim of stopping climate change from causing the damage it is causing at the moment, which could get even worse.
We need to take into account the fact that competition in local building and construction work is undertaken on a local, regional and national scale. The relevance of this from the Community point of view is that the European Union was generous enough to make a large financial contribution to the Urban plan in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife itself. The issue now, without questioning whether these funds were used properly, or whether they took due account of environmental considerations, is that we are clearly failing to see that urban development in island regions such as the Canaries, and in other outermost regions, has resulted in what we could call abusive land use, without taking other considerations into account.
Perhaps the lesson we can learn from this type of occurrence is that the European Union now has a wealth of knowledge on building in areas that are exposed to potentially catastrophic torrential rain, not only in Spain, but also in France, the UK, Germany, practically throughout the Community, in fact. Although we must not forget that this issue fundamentally falls within national competence, this is an area in which the European Union could contribute to the well-being of all of its citizens by making use of these experiences and in seeing how its assistance to projects such as the Urban projects can be more effectively implemented.
For this reason, in dealing with, for example, the Urban plan for a specific population, we should not confine ourselves to what might be called purely ornamental external characteristics, but should also look at the impact that this type of plan would have on the situation as a whole. In concrete terms, the town of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is built on steep riverbanks that have been blocked off, yet construction has continued due to demographic pressure and the need to use the land. It would probably have been useful, in studies carried out prior to the Urban plan being set in motion, for this other type of consequence to have been taken into account.
It is always, of course, much easier to talk with the benefit of hindsight and we cannot undo what has been done, but given that the Urban plan is still in force and that the European Union can have learnt from this situation, I would ask the services of the Commission to take this opportunity to consider how community aid could have prevented this kind of catastrophe and how this could be used as an example for other kinds of project in the future."@en1
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