Brussels, 19/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Danish Presidency is to suggest to the European Parliament, during a budgetary trialogue on Monday evening in Strasbourg, that it agree to making EUR 1 billion available from this year on in favour of regions affected by flooding this summer, unless some Member States confirm they have reservations about the amount. During the meeting of the Committee of Representatives of EU Member States (Coreper) on Wednesday, devoted to preparing this trialogue and that of the General Affairs Council on 30 September, no delegation voiced objection to the amount of one billion euros. During the preparatory discussions of the Council's budgetary committee, on the other hand, no fewer than seven delegations considered it to be excessive. The Presidency has therefore given Member States until Monday morning to express their reserve about the amount proposed.
Furthermore, it must be recognised that there is a certain amount of inconsistency in the timetable for presenting Commission proposals for the creation of this Fund on natural disasters. The EU15 ambassadors were only able to examine the proposal of the new institutional agreement arising from this Fund (presented on 11 September, see EUROPE of 12 September, p.9), without knowing the details of the proposal of regulation on the criteria for attributing the fund adopted several hours before by the College of Commissioners (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.8). Coreper therefore entrusted a Council working group with the task of examining this last proposal before going back to it next week, after the trialogue has been held.
The Coreper meeting nonetheless allowed a problem raised by the German and Austrian delegations to be settled. The Commission promised these countries that the principle of blocking (set out in the draft interinstitutional agreement) 25% of the assets from these funds at the end of the year does not apply in 2002. Furthermore, Germany and Austria once more made an upward review of their estimate of damage caused by floods this summer, EUR 30 billion and EUR 7 billion respectively.