Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-03-Speech-1-062"
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"en.20070903.16.1-062"2
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"Mr President, the recent forest fires in Greece brought devastation to the communities affected. Dozens of human lives were lost, hundreds of individuals were injured, thousands of animals were killed, whole villages were burned to the ground and thousands of acres of forests were annihilated. Our condolences and sympathy go to the people of Greece.
For almost 10 days we watched in horror as the fires destroyed life, property and the environment in Greece, and our minds returned to similar catastrophes in Portugal, Italy, Spain and elsewhere in Europe in previous years.
The EU has a duty to ensure that proper compensation measures are implemented swiftly. It also has a duty to look critically at the reasons why these fires had such a catastrophic effect, to analyse what went wrong in terms of prevention and fire-fighting effectiveness and to draw conclusions that might guide us in the future.
Reports from Greece point towards possible gross failings by successive central governments and local authorities to establish proper measures to prevent and fight forest fires. It seems that forests were left without adequate anti-fire zones, without functioning emergency water points and reservoirs, without proper plans for fire-fighting or for the orderly evacuation of villages, without up-to-date fire-fighting equipment and without, in some cases, modern training for fire-fighters.
What happened to EU central monitoring as regards the implementation of forest fire prevention policy? Was the Commission not aware of the apparent poor state of affairs in Greece, and what measures, if any, were taken to correct the situation? Those questions need to be answered urgently and clearly.
However, there is another aspect that should worry us, which is the fact that, according to the Greek Government, there is strong evidence that many fires were caused by organised arsonists.
The fires in Greece have demonstrated the ever-increasing threat of yet another form of terrorism: arson terrorism. It is a form of terrorism that is far more difficult to deal with, because arson terrorists do not have to go through sophisticated security checks, but simply have to go for a drive in the countryside. They do not need to use complicated explosive devices: they just need a matchbox. Therefore, it is high time that we start acting decisively and collectively on ways to counter this new, very catastrophic, form of terrorism in Europe.
In conclusion, it is very important to mention once again our gratitude to all those who fought and risked their lives in the mountains of Evia and the Peloponnese in fighting the catastrophic fires while, at the same time, politicians in Athens were fighting each other on TV shows."@en1
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