Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-01-Speech-1-062"
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"en.20030901.5.1-062"2
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"Mr President, allow me to begin by expressing my condolences at the deaths which have taken place. I believe our first duty is to express our condolences to the families. But, while this is correct and essential, we cannot restrict ourselves to this expression of immediate human solidarity.
People have been lost – in fact, in my country we still do not know how many – and this is unquestionably the most important thing; but we have also lost homes, landscapes, flora and fauna. Fire weakens the soil, and sooner or later the usual traditional storms, which we always expect on the Mediterranean coasts in September and October, will arrive, taking advantage of this weakened soil to erode these areas even further. Let us keep this in mind.
There is no doubt that the heat wave and the drought have contributed to this disaster, but heat is not a new phenomenon in the Mediterranean. As has already been said, we have had heat for centuries. What is exceptional here are these temperatures which exceed anything we have known and, therefore, those people who were sceptical about climate change should perhaps give this some thought and governments, companies and individuals should take the appropriate measures.
People are wondering what the European Union is doing in this respect. The Commissioner proposes mobilising the Solidarity Fund, and I agree – I am rapporteur for the Committee on Budgets, and there is therefore no doubt that I will be sympathetic to this proposal – but the Solidarity Fund, Commissioner, relates to natural disasters, and these are not just natural. There are arsonists and huge numbers of criminal cases, and we should also be asking ourselves what we are doing with the directive and with other legislation on environmental responsibility, how we apply them, how we transpose them and how they are implemented, and how we demand those responsibilities.
I began in this Parliament in 1986. I believe my first action was a motion for a resolution calling for programmes for the prevention of forest fires in the Mediterranean. We went ahead with such schemes five years later, in 1992, and we had a ten-year programme running from 1992 to 2002. Why have appropriations always been left over, Commissioner? You have given us several good examples, but I, as rapporteur for budgets, would say to you that every year on the
transfer there are appropriations which originate from that fund. Why? Because the governments have not used them? I believe this is very serious, because if they are not used, next year we will once again be in the same position.
We must take action at Community level. The Member States have their responsibilities, but I believe the European Union has a duty here to take the lead and to impose measures; otherwise we will have to trust, as we do every year, that the winters put out the fires of the summer."@en1
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