€101.5 mln in EU aid for Thessaly
The European Commission proposed Tuesday to provide Greece with €101.5 million in aid to support recovery efforts from the disastrous floods of September 2023.
The support is part of a €1 billion package to help Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Austria and France to deal with the impacts of the severe floods that hit these countries in 2023.
In January, the Commission had approved an advance payment of €25.3 million “to ease the financial burden of reconstruction efforts.”
In granting the advance payment, the Commission had described the storm, which caused extensive flooding, mainly in Thessaly and central Greece, as the “deadliest tropical-like cyclone to take place in the Mediterranean in recorded history.”
Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms Elisa Ferreira had said, “Last year’s floods caused by cyclone Daniel can only be described as a tragic event in Greece’s history; citizens lost their lives and homes, with their surrounding environment being heavily impacted and altered by the extensive damages caused by the cyclone.”
Greece had estimated total direct damage at €2.3 billion.
In addition to the Greek support, the aid package is allocated as follows: €446.6 million to Italy; €428.4 million for Slovenia; €46.7 million for France and €5.2 million for Austria.
The EUSF assistance will cover part of the costs of emergency and recovery operations, including repairing damaged infrastructure, safeguarding cultural heritage, and conducting cleanup operations.
“The EU Solidarity Fund is a dedicated instrument to support member-states to recover after devastating natural disasters of major proportions, to stand in solidarity with those impacted. This aid not only provides relief and assistance for emergency costs, but also helps EU countries to better rebuild in the context of the challenges posed by climate change,” Ferreira said Tuesday.
The European Parliament has to approve the proposal. When it does, aid will be disbursed in a single installment.
Greece is expected to spend hundreds of billions of euros over the next few decades on mitigating the effects of climate change. But doing nothing would raise the cost to €700 billion by the end of the century, said climate researcher Christos Zerefos.
