the menu proposed by the EU for DANA in Valencia

It is in this context that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albaresmade a working visit to Brussels on Monday to explore with community leaders all the resources and instruments available for reconstruction tasks.

Even before, since Wednesday noon, when barely a few hours had passed since the sudden floods, the President of the Commission herself, Ursula von der Leyenoffered to Spain all kinds of help to face DANA of Valencia.

“The Commission will continue to provide all the necessary support to Spain in this difficult situation,” repeated the Executive Vice-President this Tuesday at the end of Ecofin. Valdis Dombrovskis.

However, so far the only EU aid that has been activated is the Copernicus satellite systemwhich, according to Von der Leyen, served to help coordinate rescue teams. The map created from Copernicus data reveals that more than 4,100 hectares of land area and 3,906 buildings were affected by the floods, while more than 60,000 people, 15.2 kilometers of railways and 531.6 kilometers of roads were potentially affected.

However, Spain has not yet activated the other Community immediate aid instrument, the European Civil Protection Mechanismand this despite repeated offers from Brussels. This system makes it possible to urgently mobilize and deploy specialized equipment and materials from other EU Member States: first aid kits, shelter equipment, water pumps or electricity and fuel generators.

The decision to activate the civil protection mechanism corresponds to whoever directs the emergency, which in this case is the Valencian Communitywhich for the moment has not used this possibility, according to European sources. If the government of Carlos Mazon If you change your mind, you will have to communicate it to the Ministry of the Interior, which is Spain’s interlocutor in Brussels for these types of questions.

During his press conference after the Council of Ministers, the President of the Government announced that he would request help from European Union Solidarity Fundbut has not revealed what amount it aspires to achieve.

This instrument, intended to intervene in the event of serious natural disasters, was created precisely in response to the major floods of the summer of 2002 in Germany and Central Europe. Since then, it has mobilized a total of 8.6 billion for 130 disasters in 24 Member States.

The Solidarity Fund is used to respond to large-scale disasters, the damage of which represents at least 3 billion euros or 0.6% of the gross national income of the affected country. Both conditions are met in the case of DANA of Valencia.

It helps will cover part of the costs of emergency and recovery operationsnotably the repair of damaged infrastructure, the safeguarding of cultural heritage and the carrying out of cleaning operations.

The Government now has 12 weeks to send its request to Brussels, with an estimate of the damage and the necessary sums. Spain can also request payment of an urgent advance, the maximum amount of which is 25% of the total. The annual budget of the Solidarity Fund amounts to 1,144 million euros per year (with a reserve of 50 million for advances), but part of the money has already been spent on other disasters.

“The Commission can confirm that there are still funds available in the 2024 budget“, regional policy spokesperson Stefan de Keersmaecker told EL ESPAÑOL. If that were not enough, the payment could be supplemented with aid corresponding to 2025.

So far, the largest aid from the Solidarity Fund amounts to almost 1.2 billion euros to respond to several earthquakes in Italy between August 2016 and January 2017. Our country barely received 100 million euros in total; The latest payment being 9.45 million in response to the La Palma volcanic eruption.

The other aid that the Sánchez government plans to request corresponds to the new instrument Restoreproposed last October by the Von der Leyen Commission. The problem is that this initiative has not yet been approved by governments and the European Parliament.

The president asked them to do so by “urgent means.” This mechanism would allow reallocate a maximum of 10% of structural funds that Spain has granted during the period 2021-2027 to support people affected by climate disasters.

The reform provides for additional pre-financing of 30% in order to offer an immediate injection of liquidity to relieve budgetary pressure on the Member States concerned. Second, the EU will finance 100% of the reconstruction work, without the need for national co-financing.

Spain has allocated 37.3 billion euros to cohesion policy for 2021-2027, although of this amount the Valencian Community is in principle responsible for around 1.1 billion euros. The vice president Dombrovskis said Next Gen funds could also be reprogrammed for rebuilding efforts.

Deficit margin

Finally, the last means of relief that the European Union offers to Spain is greater flexibility in the application of the new budgetary discipline rules. Concretely, Brussels will allow expenditure intended to mitigate the impact of DANA not to be taken into account when activating the sanction process for excessive deficit, because it is a specific and extraordinary measure, like the a spokesperson for the organization told this newspaper.

“Spanish authorities could be authorized to account for national expenditure directly linked with this natural disaster (which includes loans from the Recovery and Resilience Fund) as a one-off expense, which will be taken into account when assessing a possible deviation from the nominal deficit target of 3% or the trajectory of net expenditure in the context of the reform of budgetary rules”, specifies the spokesperson.

“We consider that Extraordinary spending has no lasting effect on the deficit and public spendingthey therefore do not require compensatory measures. Furthermore, spending on grants provided by EU funds is deficit neutral and excluded from net spending growth, so their use to address this natural disaster will not negatively affect the position of the Spanish prosecutor,” he underlined.

This means that our country would have considerable room to deviate from the 3% deficit limit set by the Stability Pact without being fined by the EU: only The first package announced by Sánchez is now equivalent to seven tenths of GDP. And the president of the government announced that even more aid would be necessary for the reconstruction of populations affected by the floods.