B4-0344, 0349, 0357, 0361, 0368, 0374, 0380, 0390, 0395, 0396 and 0407/94

Resolution on the floods in Italy, France and Spain

The European Parliament,

A.whereas extensive areas of northern Italy, in Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy in particular, have been hit by heavy flooding which has cost many lives, left thousands homeless, devastated cities, countryside, commercial, industrial and agricultural structures, hospitals, schools, railways and roads of every category, isolated many towns and caused damage whose cost is put at more than Lit 20 billion,

B.pointing out that these floods are the worst in Piedmont since the beginning of the century and that over recent years Liguria has suffered numerous violent storms which have caused very serious damage to public and private property,

C.whereas, in a repeat of a problem which has affected Mediterranean Europe over the years, Corsica, southern France and wide areas of Spain have also been hit by violent flooding,

D.whereas the main causes of such disasters are to be found in the areas' hydrogeological problems, caused essentially by deforestation, single-crop farming, urban sprawl and the failure to comply with environmental legislation,

E.whereas Italy and the European Union are signatories to the Convention on the Protection of the Alpine Heritage,

F.whereas the scale of the disaster must be attributed not only to the exceptionally heavy rain but also to the lack of prompt assistance and the scant resources made available,

G.whereas such largely foreseeable disasters are the result of disregard and neglect of regional planning over many decades, a complete failure to make provision for emergencies and a policy genuinely committed to protecting the environment,

1.Extends its deepest sympathy to the families of the victims;

2.Expresses solidarity with the victims and the homeless;

3.Calls on the Italian Government to support the request of the regional and local authorities for a special law to fit the circumstances, since the declaration of a state of emergency alone does not seem commensurate with the urgent nature of the situation;

4.Calls on the Commission to take all necessary and feasible steps to repair the damage caused by the catastrophic storms of recent days to agriculture and other economic activities on the Greek islands of Samos and Lesbos as well as the island of Kasos which, because of the enormous damage and its traditional economy, is at risk of depopulation;

5.Calls on the Commission to make available to the hardest hit communities the emergency aid provided for in the Community budget (in particular under heading B4-340) and to study ways and means of using the structural funds received by these regions for the purposes of reconstruction, reclamation and prevention;

6.Notes the initial funding of ECU 6 m allocated at the request of its Committee on Budgets to the regions hit by flooding and draws attention to its resolution of 15 November 1994 on draft supplementary and amending budget No 2 for 1994, paragraph 5 of which specifically 'calls on the Commission to examine the possibility of funding special assistance to the regions of the Union recently hit by flooding from the funds already committed, even before 1994, and not taken up by the regions of the Member States concerned, within the framework of the Structural Funds';

7.Calls on the Commission to supervise the use of the funds committed so as to prevent them being employed in a manner inconsistent with the need for solving the hydrogeological problem, which is the real cause of the disaster in the regions concerned;

8.Calls for an effective hydrogeological disaster prevention and reorganization plan to be drawn up and implemented as a matter of extreme urgency, backed up by appropriate legislative and financial instruments;

9.Calls on the Commission to apply Article 130r of the Maastricht Treaty, which requires the causes of environmental damage to be tackled rather than its consequences, and plan joint action to protect the environment in close coordination with national authorities;

10.Considers it necessary in this regard for the Member States concerned, in cooperation with the Commission, to draw up a coordinated plan for achieving the objectives set out in paragraph 7;

11.Calls on the Commission to act on its own authority to ensure implementation of a policy of restoring the courses of rivers and bodies of water to their original state and of preventive work in connection with those projects which have aggravated the damage caused by the rain;

12.Reiterates the need for a policy on reafforestation and the use of crops which are consistent with the policy on hill and upland farming, in accordance with Community directives;

13.Calls on the Italian Government and regions to introduce a policy of conserving and protecting the mountains by extending protected areas (in accordance with the habitats directive) and improving their management and promoting appropriate forms of employment for the inhabitants of the localities in question;

14.Stresses the need to draw up as soon as possible a package of ad hoc civil protection measures on the basis of checks and coordination among the Member States carried out under the auspices of the Commission;

15.Draws attention to the need to implement and monitor Community legislation strictly, especially legislation requiring prior environmental impact assessments and concerning major hazards;

16.Calls for existing and future legislation to be strictly monitored and to incorporate specific legal constraints;

17.Calls, to this end, for the introduction of measures to improve the efficiency of the system whereby the public may lodge complaints with the Commission and the Court of Justice and for the introduction of financial penalties and of third party liability where damage is caused to the environment;

18.Calls for the setting up of an independent Community environment inspectorate invested with genuine powers of investigation and the power to monitor compliance with Community legislation and to record violations of that legislation throughout the Union;

19.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Italian Government and the regional and local authorities concerned.