Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-17-Speech-1-190"
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"en.20081117.24.1-190"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, fellow Members, first of all, I would like to say how happy I am that we are finally having a debate on this topic. I hope that today’s debate will also produce the results which the Commissioner has already promised us. We all know that the current procedures for actually accessing the Solidarity Fund take a long time. I am therefore proposing that the Union's budget be amended.
For example, when Romania wanted to obtain aid from the Solidarity Fund following the floods which took place in the spring/summer of 2005, it had to wait around a year to receive the money. The provision of the Regulation stipulates that the application should be submitted no later than ten weeks after the disaster takes place and the total value of the losses must be given, which helps to classify the type of disaster. It is rather difficult to meet these requirements when floods are involved, for instance. In order to evaluate the losses properly, the water needs to be drained off completely. This does not depend in any circumstances on national institutions and authorities. The next procedure is for the Commission to verify compliance with the conditions, primarily those of a major disaster. This requires a good deal of time, including additional information and clarifications. Finally, after the amended budget has been approved, the Commission prepares and approves the decisions for awarding the grants. This is ultimately followed by the transfer of funds, which must be spent within a year at the latest. In practical terms, this money reimburses the expenses already paid out by the beneficiary state following the disaster it has been through. On the basis of these conditions, we all ask ourselves whether this is really emergency aid.
I would like to conclude by saying that rejecting the Commission’s proposal to modify the Regulation after discussing it in the Working Group of the Financial Counsellors, without consulting the ‘Structure Action’ group, may lead to the conclusion that, in practical terms, the finance ministers were not in agreement. This conclusion creates numerous problems for us, especially in the current climate with so many problems and at Member State level too."@en1
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