PORTUGAL: European Commissioners yesterday proposed that the European Union should contribute €31.6 million in emergency aid to Portugal, as an act of solidarity after the forest fires that have devastated the country this summer.
Announcing the decision, the European Commissioner for regional policy, Mr Michel Barnier, said he was expecting a request for similar assistance from France. The president of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, told the French prime minister, Mr Jean Pierre Raffarin, who visited the Commission yesterday, that he would look sympathetically on such a request.
The money proposed for Portugal is only a small proportion of the total damage suffered, which is estimated to be worth at least a billion euro.
But the contribution from the European Union Solidarity Fund is specifically intended to help with the cost of emergency measures, such as providing temporary accommodation for those made homeless by the fire and bringing in emergency supplies of energy and water.
The solidarity fund was set up last year, prompted mainly by the floods in Germany and central Europe but also by the memory of the Erika oil spill.
Spending from the fund is capped at €1 billion a year.
Faced with criticism that the donation was only a symbolic gesture, Mr Barnier said: "A symbol worth €31.6 million is more than a symbol." He stressed that the EU was reacting very quickly to a disaster that was only a few weeks old. The proposal will need to be approved by the European Parliament and the European Union states but the money could be with the Portuguese government by mid-October.
Portugal will also be allowed to reallocate its structural funds to respond to the fire damage.
Figures published by the commission's research centre yesterday suggest that the fires in Portugal have damaged 6 per cent of the country's forests. In total, 356,000 hectares have been burnt, 301,000 of which was forest. In just one summer, the fires in Portugal have burnt an area equivalent to what in recent years was the total annual burnt area in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece combined.
Mr Barnier repeated his call for an EU-wide civil protection force to respond to disasters. "We must go further in measures of co-ordination," he said.