The European Commission has granted aid worth €66.5 million from the European Union Solidarity Fund to Bulgaria, Italy and Romania following three natural disasters in 2014.
The aid — €1.98 million to Bulgaria, €56 million to Italy and nearly €8.5 million to Romania — aims to partially cover the emergency costs of recovery operations following floods. It will particularly help restore vital infrastructure and services, reimburse the cost of emergency and rescue operations, and cover some of the clean-up costs in the disaster-stricken regions.
Many of the Programmes co-financed by European Structural and Investment Funds for 2014-2020 aim to invest in preventing floods and mitigating the impact of climate change, for which there is a sustained need.
In October and November 2014, five Italian regions suffered recurrent severe weather with heavy rainfall leading to flooding, mudslides and landslides. In February 2015, Italian authorities applied for financial aid from the Solidarity Fund. In May 2014, Romania was affected by widespread flooding which damaged transport, water, energy, and communication infrastructure, homes and farms.
Neighbouring country Serbia has already been awarded EU Solidarity aid after being afflicted by the same disaster. The flooding affected 30 of the 42 Romanian counties, followed in July and August by heavy floods and landslides in five counties of the Romanian Sud-Vest Oltenia region. Finally, the region of Severozapaden in Bulgaria - one of the least developed regions in the EU - also suffered greatly from flooding in summer 2014.
The total annual allocation available for the European Solidarity Fund in 2015 is €541.2 million. Adding the remainder of the allocation from the preceding year, the total amount of the Solidarity Fund available during 2015 is more than €895 million.
The European Union Solidarity Fund was set up to support Member States and countries applying for EU accession by offering financial support after major natural disasters. The Fund was created in the wake of the severe floods in Central Europe in the summer of 2002.
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