Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-04-Speech-3-361"
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"en.20090204.19.3-361"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, on 23 January I was in Galicia when winds of almost 200 km per hour struck my region: over 40 000 hectares of forest were devastated, Commissioner.
Galicia has the highest density of forested land in the European Union. After the passage of the storm, hundreds of thousands of trees had been blown down, roads were blocked and more than 500 km of high- and low-tension electricity cables were down and have still not been fully repaired.
Over 300 000 subscribers, including myself, suffered power cuts, in some cases for several days, as well as a loss of telephone services.
The storm caused injuries and badly damaged homes, infrastructure, farms, businesses, industrial plant, sports facilities as well as public and municipal buildings.
The response of the Government of Galicia to the storm, the worst in recorded history, allowed aid of EUR 17 million to be quickly approved for initial compensation of those affected and to subsidise repair of the damage.
As we know and as has been mentioned here, on 26 January the two worst affected Member States, France and Spain, requested European aid for the damage caused by the storm. As the damage that we have suffered can be defined as an extraordinary disaster under the terms of the prevailing Solidarity Fund Regulation, the governments of the two Member States announced that they had commenced work to apply for assistance from the Fund.
However, once again, as in the recent floods in Romania, we find that the requirements of the regulation are so restrictive that in actual fact they prevent this disaster being considered severe, Commissioner.
I would like to recall, as you and other Members have already done, that the Commission presented its proposal in 2005 and that Parliament issued its opinion in favour of reform of the Fund Regulation in 2006. Since then, the matter has been blocked in the Council, which has sat on the proposed reform for over two years.
For all these reasons, Commissioner, and given that these circumstances are exceptional and that the disaster has had serious repercussions for the living conditions and economic stability of the affected regions, I would ask you to trigger the Fund as proof of solidarity with the Member States concerned and above all with the citizens affected. They should be given financial assistance, as I believe, even though the sum involved is not so great, this would be a direct and urgently needed expression of European solidarity."@en1
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