<h6><strong>Luis Ayllón</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Government has begun the process to request help from the European Solidarity Fund to alleviate the damage caused by the DANA in the Levante area, according to what the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, said this Saturday in an institutional statement from the Palace of La Moncloa.</strong></h4> Sánchez announced that on Tuesday, the Council of Ministers will approve the declaration of an area seriously affected by a Civil Protection emergency for those places in the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia, Catalonia and Aragon that have been hit hardest by the DANA. He also indicated that the Government is in communication with the European Commission and that the process has begun to request help from the European Solidarity Fund and the use of other community support resources from the European Union. The Solidarity Fund is the Union's main instrument for supporting recovery from natural disasters and is an expression of Union solidarity. It enables the Union to provide effective support to an Union Member State (or candidate country) to help it cope with the effects of a major natural disaster, such as floods, forest fires, earthquakes, storms or droughts. Since 2020, the Solidarity Fund has also covered major public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. With the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events and climate-related natural disasters, the importance of the Solidarity Fund is increasingly recognised. The Solidarity Fund was created in 2002 to respond to the devastating floods that hit Central Europe in the summer of that year. Since then, it has provided support on more than 130 occasions. To date, 24 Member States (plus the United Kingdom) and three candidate countries (Albania, Montenegro and Serbia) have received assistance from the Solidarity Fund, with a total of more than €8.2 billion paid out. The Solidarity Fund intervention takes the form of a grant to supplement the public expenditure of the beneficiary State and is intended to finance essential emergency and recovery measures to mitigate damage that is not, in principle, insurable. The Union can grant financial assistance to any Member State or candidate country that requests it following a major natural disaster. The affected country must submit its application within 12 weeks of the disaster. The Commission then assesses the application and proposes an amount of financial assistance. The opposition had been calling for Spain to request help from the European Solidarity Fund and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, reiterated on Thursday in Madrid the call of the European Parliament for “easier, faster and more flexible” access to European Union funds, in order to support regions facing natural disasters such as the recent DANA in Spain. Last Wednesday, the European Commission offered Spain the possibility of activating the Civil Protection Mechanism to deal with the ravages caused by the DANA and the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed her solidarity with the victims and highlighted the support of the EU, which launched the Copernicus satellites to facilitate rescue work and damage assessment. Created in 2001, this mechanism can be activated not only by EU Member States, but also by countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine. The European Commission coordinates the response to disasters and covers at least 75% of operational and transport costs in deployments. When the Mechanism receives a request for assistance, the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) mobilises the necessary aid or experts. Specialised teams and equipment, such as firefighting aircraft, medical or search and rescue teams, can be deployed within or outside Europe within a short time. Since its creation, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism has been activated more than 700 times, including in 2023 to respond to the war in Ukraine, forest fires in Europe, and the earthquake in Syria and Turkey.
