The European Commission linked this Thursday to climate change. Severe flooding in the Emilia Romagna regionin northern Italy and called for increased prevention measures to alleviate The effects of such disasters are recurring more and more.
“There was a saying that these floods used to come every century, now that’s not the case anymore and they are much more common events and will occur every year or two.”He pointed to Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic in an interview with Europa Press and other agencies, including the European Newsroom.
Following the devastating floods recorded in the Emilia Romagna region last week fifteen deathsLenarcic valued Europe’s response as follows: nine emergency offers for Despite the Italian authorities activating the European Civil Protection Mechanism at midnight from Saturday to Sunday.
more and more often
The person responsible for Crisis Management warned: Europe It is immersed in a “climate crisis” and needs to adapt to the “new normal” it is in. heat wavefires, droughts and extreme weather events will become more frequent. While the Civil Protection Mechanism was activated an average of 20 times a year a few decades ago, it was used more than a hundred times last year to coordinate relief efforts in the face of natural disasters.
Now faced with this situation involving irreversible climatic eventsThe EU should increase its preparedness capacity to have more forecasting opportunities, To prepare, alert, respond and ensure the effectiveness of its operations.
“We can alleviate this”
“What we can do prevent worse and more frequent flooding“, explained the Slovenian commissioner. “We cannot prevent heat waves, droughts or floods, but we can reduce their effects.”
Look ahead, the slovenian commissioner thinks that the EU will need to strengthen the budget line dedicated to crisis management, It has already received an additional 2 billion to deal with the pandemic and the humanitarian consequences of the invasion of Ukraine.
Since Ursula von der Leyen took office in 2020, the civil protection and humanitarian aid item needs additional funds each year, which indicates that the bloc will need to strengthen economic donations for these policies.
“Every year We need about 75 million euros in reinforcements. This shows that we will have to put European civil protection on a more solid financial footing because we cannot go another year without reinforcements. This has happened every year so far,” he said.