Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-18-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20060518.4.4-013"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, faced with the ever more frequent occurrence of natural disasters – for example the many forest fires and floods, not least in the summer of 2005 – there is an ever-growing demand for European solidarity. The solidarity fund set up in the aftermath of the devastating floods in 2002 and designed to run until 2006 is intended to give the European Union greater freedom to act in the event of major disasters or crisis situations, thereby playing a substantial part in enabling the EU to do more and target its efforts better in those areas in which the public expect the European Union to act.
As you, Commissioner, mentioned earlier, it was extremely difficult, not to say sometimes and in some situations impossible, to use the existing instruments at EU level as a means of responding appropriately to major crises, not all of which, it has to be said, were of natural origin. One can take as examples of this industrial accidents – such as the wreck of the tanker
or the bomb attack on Madrid in March 2004. In addition, the current threshold for the mobilisation of the solidarity fund is set extremely high, so that exceptional conditions and arrangements abounded.
The new solidarity fund regulation now rightly makes provision for the extension of its scope, in other words, no longer limiting major crisis situations to natural disasters, but extending the category to include industrial and technological calamities, except where the ‘polluter pays’ principle is applicable or where the damage can be covered by insurance. There is also a need for immediate action in the event of public health crises and when terrorists strike, although – and this is the crux of the matter – the budget must remain unchanged.
The definition of a ‘major disaster’ has also been revised, so that a disaster is regarded as major if it causes damage estimated at in excess of EUR 1 billion or over 0.5% of the gross national income of the State concerned. One is talking here about damage in the public sphere rather than to private property or damage covered by insurance. As has been said, the threshold was formerly fixed at EUR 3 billion or 0.6% of gross national income, which threshold values had been proposed by the Commission and by this House, but not accepted by the Council.
Finally, it is also intended that a new political criterion be introduced to enable the Commission, should extraordinary circumstances in a specific part of the territory of an eligible state sufficiently warrant it, to declare a disaster situation to be major, even if the quantitative criteria have not been fulfilled – a criterion that is likely to apply to acts of terrorism.
It needs to be emphasised that the European Union’s solidarity fund is not a means for taking preventive action, but that it instead responds to disaster situations. That, for example, excludes the possibility of the fund being used to provide protection in advance of pandemics or to facilitate other preventive action. The solidarity fund cannot engage in preventive health care, nor is it meant to; health policy remains a matter for the nation states, and by that is meant specifically the deployment of vaccines and medicines in the initial response to disasters, medical and psychological emergency care and measures to deal with the risk of contagious disease, for example as a consequence of flooding.
As before, the fund’s financial assets amount to a virtual budget of 1 billion marks, the significance of ‘virtual’ being that these funds can be drawn on only in the event of a disaster, and must first be mobilised by the Commission and Parliament; it follows that they cannot be transferred elsewhere.
I would like to conclude by extending warm thanks to all who have worked with me on this report – to the Bureau, to my colleagues, and to the Members of this House, irrespective of whatever groups they belong to, with hearty thanks to the Commission, too, for its good cooperation."@en1
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