€101.5 mln in EU aid for Thessaly

Floodwater covers houses and farms aft a devastating rainstorm successful the colony of Kastro, successful Thessaly, cardinal Greece, successful September 2023. [VAGGELIS KOUSIORAS/AP]

The European Commission projected Tuesday to supply Greece with €101.5 cardinal successful assistance to enactment betterment efforts from the disastrous floods of September 2023.

The enactment is portion of a €1 cardinal bundle to assistance Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Austria and France to woody with the impacts of the terrible floods that deed these countries successful 2023.

In January, the Commission had approved an beforehand outgo of €25.3 cardinal “to easiness the fiscal load of reconstruction efforts.”

In granting the beforehand payment, the Commission had described the storm, which caused extended flooding, chiefly successful Thessaly and cardinal Greece, arsenic the “deadliest tropical-like cyclone to instrumentality spot successful the Mediterranean successful recorded history.”

Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms Elisa Ferreira had said, “Last year’s floods caused by cyclone Daniel tin lone beryllium described arsenic a tragic lawsuit successful Greece’s history; citizens mislaid their lives and homes, with their surrounding situation being heavy impacted and altered by the extended damages caused by the cyclone.”

Greece had estimated full nonstop harm astatine €2.3 billion.

In summation to the Greek support, the assistance bundle is allocated arsenic follows: €446.6 cardinal to Italy; €428.4 cardinal for Slovenia; €46.7 cardinal for France and €5.2 cardinal for Austria.

The EUSF assistance volition screen portion of the costs of exigency and betterment operations, including repairing damaged infrastructure, safeguarding taste heritage, and conducting cleanup operations.

“The EU Solidarity Fund is simply a dedicated instrumentality to enactment member-states to retrieve aft devastating earthy disasters of large proportions, to basal successful solidarity with those impacted. This assistance not lone provides alleviation and assistance for exigency costs, but besides helps EU countries to amended rebuild successful the discourse of the challenges posed by clime change,” Ferreira said Tuesday.

The European Parliament has to o.k. the proposal. When it does, assistance volition beryllium disbursed successful a azygous installment.

Greece is expected to walk hundreds of billions of euros implicit the adjacent fewer decades connected mitigating the effects of clime change. But doing thing would rise the outgo to €700 cardinal by the extremity of the century, said clime researcher Christos Zerefos.