Luxembourg, 22/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Council, European Parliament and Commission have reached an inter-institutional agreement over the setting up of a Disaster Solidarity Fund after a video conference conciliation meeting of more than two hours on the fringes of the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg. This agreement should pave the way for releasing the first tranche of funding before Christmas for flood victims in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, announced the President of the Council, Bert Haarder. Under the agreement, the Fund will have EUR 1 billion a year, most of which will be spent on the victims of natural disasters, but other forms of disaster have not been ruled out, taking account of the polluter pays principle, explained Bert Haarder.
Requests for funding can be sent to the Commission once aid for the victims of natural disasters leads to a rise in public spending by the Member State in question (a rise of EUR 3 billion or 0.6% of GDP. Haarder explained that the double criterion made it possible to measure the scale of disasters for both large and small Member States). The Commission and Parliament started off by calling for the eligibility criterion to be set at 0.5% of GDP, while the Council had called for 1%, he explained. Exceptionally, disasters of a lesser scale, that affect most of the population of a particular region, may be considered for aid, as long as the Disaster Fund aid in question is no higher than 7.5% of the total fund, ie EUR 75 million. Member States have 10 weeks after the disaster to make a request for aid (rather than the two months suggested by the Council) and the aid has to be spent in the year following its payment, failing which it will return to the Fund. According to estimates provided by Haarder, such a Fund could have been used seven times over the past fifteen years, had it already existed at the time.