Committee on Budgets Ordinary meeting
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
BUDG European Parliament
Follow its sittingsEulalia Rubio
We have described this a bit in the studies. So for prevention, the main issue, the main change is the fact that we have these national and regional partnership plans, and that basically creates more uncertainty on allocations for climate adaptation. There are also changes in the common agricultural policy, particularly in the green architecture of the common agricultural policy that gives, for instance, more discretion to set conditionalities attached to payments to farmers. There is also a big boost in Horizon Europe and the creation of the new European competitiveness fund, that also creates the hope of having more investment of more funds for climate adaptation innovation. And there is the discontinuity of the life program that is now, it does not count anymore with a dedicated budget.
On disaster preparedness, the main changes are that there is a big boost also in Europe in the UCPM, in the civil protection mechanism. It doubles the budget, but also it increased the scope because now there will be also health preparedness in this UCPM. And there is the idea of mainstreaming preparedness by design in the next MFA, but which in practice translates basically in this objective or obligation to introduce this principle in the national plans. There are two big issues also in terms of horizontal issues. There is, in general, more will, like, flexibility in practically all the problems, and this creates much more, things that will be decided in the annual programming through the so called steering mechanism.
And there is also this new single EU tracking and performance framework with also the uniform application that the commission willingness to provide a much more uniform application of the do not significant harm principle. There are also important changes on climate disaster response and recovery that Ian will explain in the following slide.
Ian Beck
Can I switch it? Can you switch the slide? Alright. First, the famous cascade mechanism that I'm sure you've heard plenty about, which is going to be the new approach. What you need to bear in mind here is the current approach consists of the EU Solidarity Fund and the RescEU mechanism, which is a way of using cohesion policy funding to deal with natural disasters by taking away a share of that.
Instead, the cascade mechanism is going to be in these four steps. First, member states will be able to reprogram their national plans up to 1 percentage point for each disaster that strikes them. If that's not enough, they're able to use what's called the flexibility amount in the national plan up to 2.5 percentage points of the flexibility amount in a single request, but a total of 10 percentage points of the 25 of flexibility over the full MFF, five before the midterm review, five after. Next step is at the EU facility, which I'm sure you heard plenty about in your deliberations on the MFF, which is a way really of recreating the EU Solidarity Fund in a new way, which is that it becomes the solidarity actions within that large fund with a significantly increased budget. Shared management conditions similar to the EUSF are at present.
Speaker 4
And the last stage is a relatively small budget cushion, also within the EU facility. Adequacy. Does anybody know what it means? If you don't know what it means, you have to think about it because adequacy is not easy. It's one way of looking at adequacy, is to say, yes.
Ian Beck
There are two funding envelopes. Let's compare them. And if one is bigger than the other, that's good enough. But you also have to associate it with the needs. If needs become greater, adequacy becomes more difficult to realize.
And there's also questions about coherence, because there are different ways of interpreting what should be done. Our judgment in this study has been more needs to go on prevention, and maybe a bit less on the others relative to each other. Also, adequacy is about governance. Flexibility, yes, is a good idea in general, but not too much flexibility, because it's better suited to some kinds of action like prevention and much less so to response and recovery from disasters. And that means that monitoring is inherently important in this because there are tensions between tracking, tensions around the idea of mainstreaming by design when we already know that there are so many other forms of mainstreaming that are entered into the current MFF.
So we invented a picture for you. We tried to think about this that it's not as though these are four separate areas: prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery, but they are linked. If you prevent and prepare well, the questions that you need to deal with when you're responding in the immediate sense to a crisis are much diminished. But then if you recover well, including something like what Ulalia has already mentioned, build back better. Build back better means that prevention becomes easier because you'll get better-quality stocks.
One of those we interviewed for this study said to us, after an earthquake, there is no point in restoring the house that's been torn down to the same standard as it had before the earthquake because it will just collapse again. You need to build it back better, and that de facto becomes a form of prevention. And you'll see that we situated the cascade mechanism between response and recovery. The union civil protection mechanism between preparedness and response because it does bits of both, and we could expand this and say that for the next bit, the one percent first stage of the national and regional partnership plans, that's between best between prevention and preparedness rather than immediate response. Adequacy goes in different directions as well.
The current MFF, if you believe the figures, allocates something like 21% of its budget to climate adaptation. That's adaptation. It's not the same as other forms of climate investment. It's not clear post in the post-2027 AMF whether that will be the same. We do know there's going to be a 43% threshold, but what that covers is uncertain.
Preparedness, the doubling that Ula already mentioned of the budget for the civil protection mechanism is a significant improvement, but it has a broader scope. It has to do with things related to health. Preparedness by design, what's adequate, how much you need to prepare by design. And then the cascade mechanism, a more integrated response makes sense. It's more predictable.
There is going to be a significant boost compared with the existing EU Solidarity Fund, and I've done, we did two separate calculations there. There is a seven-year of the current EUSF, and it will be increased roughly by 2 and a half times. But if you take the post-midterm review figure for the current EUSF, it had already doubled. And if you multiply that by seven, then the new increase will be roughly twice. Either way, it's a big increase, but you have to be careful about what you're comparing to what.
So the question then is back to adequacy. It may be more, but is it enough for the emerging demands? And the fact that the EU is going to use member states' own preallocated funds as the first step means that the net transfer coming from the EU in the case of a disaster isn't going to arise in the same way as with the current EUSF unless you reach stage three of the cascade mechanism. There are also concerns about exactly what the print procedures are going to be. We and now we've tried, believe me, very hard with the EP staff, with others, to work out whether you apply for all four stages at once or sequentially.
We tried to work out whether Build Back Better will be sufficiently integrated into the solidarity line of the EU facility. We tried to work out as well whether other things in the procedures will occur in the same way. And this is something where we think and anticipate one of our recommendations. You, the European Parliament, should be demanding answers and clarity on this. So we move now to policy recommendations, and I'll start with the ones.
Eulalia Rubio
Sorry. Eight policy recommendations. I will try to summarize them. I would say they build on our assessment of the MFF proposal. On prevention, you will see here two of them.
The first is to secure sufficient resources for natural disaster prevention. The finding of our studies that, we don't really can say. We cannot say how many resources will be dedicated to natural disaster prevention because there is a lot of flexibility. There are no earmarks. And here, we put and as Ian has said, one of our conclusion is that we need to put more emphasis on prevention than on response to disasters.
So we put different options. They are not mutually exclusive. One option could be to set a 20-21% spending target. This is exactly the percentage that is now used, according to the commission, dedicated from the current MFF to climate adaptation. There could be other ways of doing it.
You could also reinstate the minimum earmarking for agri environmental actions or climate actions under cap. You could also reinstate a dedicated budget for life. And another way of also increasing or sufficient resources for natural disaster prevention could be to introduce climate resilience considerations in the selection of projects under the European Competitiveness Fund. Because one fear we have is that European Competitiveness Fund, there will be other areas in which maybe there will for reasons of security or for reasons of competitiveness will be best places to gain this money. The second main point is the need to improve the quality of investments because this also comes from, as I said, many reports from the court of auditors.
No. The way we are investing new funds in climate adaptation is not effective. It's not good. There are a lot of weaknesses in the project selection. There are a lot of weaknesses in monitoring.
Many times, what the ECA found is that there is a preference for financing short fixes instead of transformative projects. So, again, we put some proposals to try to correct this. One would be to require the commission to develop and harmonize the methodology to identify climate risks and to help member states to use this methodology in the programming of the national plans. Another one would be to put higher co-financing rates for the more transformative investments. And the third possibility could be to empower the commission to scrutinize temporary derogations from cap protective practices.
The third point is about exactly on cap direct payments. One thing, it's also related to this emphasis on flexibility. One part of this flexibility now is that member states will have much more flexibility to decide on the conditionality attached to direct payments. So what we believe is that we can keep this flexibility. It makes sense to give them flexibility, but it also makes sense maybe not to exclude them from this uniform application of the do not significant harm principle that now the commission is committed to do.
Because right now, as it is written in the regulation, cap direct payments will be automatically excluded from this analysis of do not significant harm principle. And we know for some studies that exist that have been done at the national level that have proved that sometimes, there are agricultural practices that even if they respect this conditionality, they can harm the environment. So it makes sense maybe to have some mechanism to control for the application of this principle. Another big issue is the idea of applying this preparedness-by-design principle. We believe that is a very good idea to mainstream the preparedness by design principle all over the MFF and particularly in the national plans, but we realized that it's very unclear how to operationalize this.
First, because even if it's said in the communication that the new MFF will be informed by this preparedness-by-design principle. Actually, it is not written in the EU budget performance regulation that this principle has to inform the whole MFF. It's just in the recitals, actually, of the regulation. So maybe we have to put it in the regulations that it is really a principle that is taken into account for all the programs in the MFF. And then particularly for the national plans, it will be important to define, to operationalize very clearly this principle, and we believe it would be good to define minimum preparedness requirements that all member states have to comply.
And in case they do not comply, that they have the obligation to put some measures within the member national plans to fulfill these requirements. And last point on preparedness, one thing we also highlight and we find in our studies that we think that is a very good thing, that the UCPM has been significantly increased in size. But, again, there's a lot of flexibility in the use of the UCPM budget. There are no indicative budgets on how much it has to be used for preparedness, for prevention, or for response. We believe that flexibility is good.
But, again, as Ian has said, I mean, flexibility, it's good for certain things, but there are things such as programmable actions for ECPM that are nevertheless important to do. Think about, for instance, the building up of this firefighting equipment at the EU level. And we believe that it would make sense to dedicate and to earmark some part of these funds for this programmable actions that are important.
But invite it.
Ian Beck
The first one is something that comes from, of all places, the European Central Bank in combination with the pensions industry. And that is the observation that private insurance against natural disasters is not only low, but has been declining. So they have taken something which we've sold for this purpose is with national insurance schemes, having a kind of reinsurance backup at the European level, which would not have a big cost in budgetary terms, could be a good idea. I suppose it's something like investee you with a guarantee would be the most likely way to do it. Certainly, and I've already hinted at this, all these ambiguities about the way the cascade mechanism will function, you need to press on.
Who will decide? Will the European Parliament be involved as the budgetary authority in the mobilization of the EU facility or not? We've heard multiple answers to this as well. And then the last point I want to make here is gonna be a bit repetitive. It's post-disaster.
Build Back Better should be a central principle for the next iteration of what used to be the EU Solidarity Fund. It's important as well to have opportunities to change the amounts because if disasters start to increase on the trajectory we've seen in the past, there's an argument for saying you need to interfere maybe even more often in a midterm review in working out how much money should be available. And the last one is more controversial. The commission doesn't like it, so you may well like it. And that is to say, why not separate the EU solidarity line from the EU facility and keep it as it is at present as a special instrument, which is outside the MFF ceilings but within the MFF, so that the member state suffers from a disaster knows there is a particular pot which they don't have to qualify for by using their first two stages, but instead can use as the EUSF has been since 2002 as the backup.
We think, or at least I think, everybody agrees with this, this could be a good idea. Inquiétude.
Janusz Lewandowski
Thank you for your, as expected, professional presentation. Next part and final is coming, I think, in the second half of this year. I am waiting for this as it is on cost of nonaction, but it's also very much persuasive for the public opinion. I would like to invite now my colleagues for comments or questions. Mister Ressler, please, EPP.
Karlo Ressler
Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for the presentation. Croatia has actually, in this current financial framework, suffered two devastating earthquakes, and we have benefited from the European Solidarity Fund. Okay. Trying to slow it down further. We benefited for a bit more than €1,000,000,000.
And, obviously, we really felt it as a really real European solidarity and Croatian citizens, but I have the feeling that it's similar with the floods in Central Europe, but also the floods in Spain. And I really have the feeling that this EU support, but in essence, the Solidarity Fund helped to facilitate this really feeling of European identity and real solidarity. So I welcome this operational proposal as well, especially this proposal number eight, because I think that without this, with only this sort of cascade mechanism and the first and second pillar or how you call it, the dimension actually mimicking what is now possible with the reprogramming of the cohesion funds. But I really think that, unfortunately, this doesn't provide the real European solidarity when member states would be taking money from their national envelopes. So thank you once again.
And my concrete question would be if you can please elaborate a bit more, especially in this policy recommendation number two of improving the quality of NRPP investments in climate adaptation. How would this actually work? I think that this can be quite useful as well, especially in this context of an attempt to set higher co-financing rules for more virtuous climate resilience measures in the NRPPs, but I would be really curious to hear in practical terms what would be really a concrete suggestion here.
Sandra Gómez López
Of all, thank you very much to the speakers for the report. I think it's very important, given the current situation we are in. We are facing a situation where we have these natural disasters and a lot of it is due to human impact and action, we see them becoming stronger and more intense. So I think it's important that the MFF is a way for us to think about how we respond to this. So, first of all, prevention.
And I would like to ask, because I'm not entirely clear on the investment that's being done in terms of prevention. So we've heard about climate adaptation tackling climate change, CO2 emissions. Are there any new ideas, though, that could help us to really better prepare our more vulnerable or critical infrastructure, for example, when it comes to these types of disasters? So, our logistics, motorways, for example, can really be devastated in these types of climate disasters. Secondly, we've talked about the solidarity fund, but I think we need to think about this in a different way.
So we had Spain and, you know, what happened in Valencia, which was one of the worst climate disasters we saw in recent decades. And you have to think about the broader economic impact in Spain and Europe. So it affects companies in a broader sphere, European companies. So we have to try and really broaden the focus. We're talking about a broader region here, a single market.
So I think it's not sufficient what has been proposed. It's, we're talking about 10% of the damages caused, which isn't sufficient for the state for the recon, reconstruction. And then we also have to think about the families and the individuals who might not have protection from insurance. And in some cases, they really have absolutely nothing to rebuild, nowhere to go. So I think we need to think about all of this when it comes to reconstruction beyond just the European Solidarity Fund.
I think we do need to have an evaluation. And as the speaker said, the numbers aren't clear, so we do really need to see a significant increase in this fund in the next MFF, which I don't think is the case. Thank you.
João Oliveira
Mister Oliveira. Thank you. President speaking Portuguese. I
I should like to begin by thanking our presenters for the presentation of this study this afternoon. It's a crucial one, especially when we consider that we're currently working on the upcoming MFF, and we're going to need the right kinds of funds to face natural disasters. Portugal has frequently been hit by forest fires and floods. At the beginning of this year, also, there were a number of storms that caused a lot of damage throughout the country. And then there are some issues that are ongoing related to these types of situations, and I'd like to therefore put them to you.
The first pertains to something that isn't being studied, that's why I'm asking the question: simplification of funds, the simplification of access to EU funds. I think that simplification should be put in the context of this context, just in terms of controlling or auditing the use of EU funds, but simplification in terms of a simpler, quicker, swifter, more effective access to the funds by final beneficiaries in the case of a natural disaster. And so, here's the question. When it comes to fires, there can be farmers that have to stop their activity or businesses that are struck, and they have a real challenge in accessing EU funds, and that prevents them from continuing to produce. So it would be of utmost importance to be able to assist them in returning to production as quickly as possible.
Therefore, my first thing would be the simplification of access to funds. The second point, have you assessed whether or not it would be possible to integrate sectoral policies in preparation, prevention, and preparedness of natural disasters when it comes to a budgetary impact. For example, when we talk about energy, infrastructure, telecoms, there are a number of different sectoral policies that should integrate policies in the area of prevention, preparedness, and response. And so I wondered if you had access, whether assessed whether or not this integration had been completed in the policy. Finally, now the EU usually comes after the member states act when it comes to funds.
So have you assessed the experience that may or may not exist in terms of this procedure? In Portugal, in recent years, there has frequently been an approach in turning first to cohesion funds before going to the solidarity funds. That means that the money that was available to resolve problems of asymmetrical situations between member states, and that applies to Portugal in a number of different ways. These funds are frequently then directed at natural disaster response, which has a negative impact on these funds being actually channeled to where they were initially supposed to go because they're being turned away towards this national natural disasters response. So have you assessed that, and what does it mean?
And what impact might that have on member states' ability to address the asymmetries that exist when it comes to the use of cohesion funds? Because if there are countries that need increased investment because they're using cohesion funds for natural disasters, what impact does that have in the end? Thank you.
Christelle Petex
Chairman, I'll be speaking in French. Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, our guests who have presented this study, you show that there are huge problems with the commission's proposal for 2028, 2034 when it comes to support for national disasters. Therefore, I have three questions. First, on prevention. With the merging of cohesion funds in the CAP, with a 14% decrease in real terms, the commission is saying that we will have flexibility.
But how can we know that natural disaster prevention will not be sacrificed for other priorities that are going to be imposed on the member states? I think the question could be flipped when we look at the CAP. When it comes to civil protection, that's the second question, UCPM, the budget is doubled. But you are pointing to the fact that it is merging with preventing health crises without clear objectives. Are you not afraid that when it comes to aircraft with water that will have a negative impact on their ability to provide them?
And then the cascading mechanism. Let us call a spade a spade. This is not a cascade of solidarity. It is really a question of forcing member states to have a national plan, and you're just shifting the burden. Essentially, it is just our national contributions and our national budgets that are going to pick up the slack when we're not looking at other important investments.
So the question is simple. Is this not just a Brussels swindle that is going to force the member states to pay in Brussels' place? Thank you.
Bogdan Rzońca
Mister Sonja, perfect pronouncement on this difficult name. Bogdan Sonica. Very difficult. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Yeah.
I will speak in Polish.
Bogdan Rzońca
I'd like to thank you for this material and this debate. It's not a question of attendance, but a question of those who are interested in the question of security. And we are at a critical point in planning the expenditure for the future. So we look forward to your expertise because very often in the European Union, we lose sight of the objective, or we don't analyze enough. I also work in the petitions committee.
We traveled to Madeira, where there are a number of forest fires. And it turns out that the inappropriate planes, firefighting planes, were purchased from European funds. It's quite incredible. So prevention is number one. In Poland, we just had floods, and our services also ignored early warning signs from the European side.
So, information on floods was ignored. So we need to monitor the spending of European funds also for rescue efforts, and how we can prevent those natural disasters. So thank you very much again to the experts, and I hope that in the budgets committee we will be analyzing very carefully spending and how we should spend money, European money, to help those affected by natural disasters.
Eulalia Rubio
Thank you very much for all these questions. So I will try to deal with the questions related to prevention and preparedness. Let me start by the first, about the recommendation number two, to improve the quality of investments. So the first thing to say is that the first point required the commission to develop a harmonized methodology. It is something that goes beyond the budget, the European budget actually.
If you there are some studies today, at the EU level that shows that, actually, there is no harmonized approach on how to identify climate risk in Europe in general, at the national level also. That's also something that is said by the latest, the first report of the European Environmental Agency on climate risk. So there is a general need to harmonize these scenarios, this is the methodology to do these scenarios also for the national level. What we propose is to do this, which is something that, as I said, has been also recommended by other colleagues, but also to help member states to apply this new, this climate risk methodology in their national plans. Because, otherwise, if they don't do one, this is something that comes from, as I said, some ECA reports.
If you don't do the planning according to updated climate scenarios, well, you are preparing for outdated climate risks. And then the fur the more the climate risk becomes intense and important in the future, what you are building today, it's not sufficient to respond to the new natural disasters. So that's quite important. So here, the recommendation is just to provide more support, technical assistance to member states in programming the plans. Second, on the co-financing rules.
Well, actually, today, the commission has in the latest years, the commission has experimented in using specific co-financing rules to incentivize certain types of projects. Think about STEP, for instance. The STEP initiative, well, if you have used part of creation policy funds to support STEP projects, you have higher co-financing rates. What we are proposing is to do the same for this type of projects, the more transformative projects, so that you give a bit of incentive to member states to try to prolong things when you do climate adaptation by putting the money to these projects that are more long term and transformative. And you can do it because now you have this also performance regulation in which you have to classify the measures you have financed according to this performance regulation.
And if you go to the long list of intervention fields in this performance regulations, you will see that you can distinguish between types of climate adaptation projects. There are some climate adaptation projects that are, for instance, nature based. Well, according to the Court of Auditors, these are quite good. Why not try to incentivize this type of climate adaptation projects by giving them higher co-financing rates. The second point is how much investment in prevention.
Well, the first thing to say is that it's not easy to book to estimate how much we spend or the EU budget spends in climate adaptation. I could start by a long explanation of the methodological difficulties to do this, but it's true that it's very difficult to single out what do we level as climate adaptation investment. But to give you an idea, there is now a study, a very recent study, that says that in Europe, we need 69 billion per year to adapt to the most pressing climate risk up to 2050 in general, so 69 billion per year. Now today, with the current MFF, the collision policy, we invest 10 billion in the total programming period. We have invested 10 billion in disaster prevention investments.
So, to see the difference in magnitude. Of course, not all this 59,000,000,000 has to come from the European budget. As I said at the beginning, we have to use the European budget as a backup, as a complement to national budgets in a very targeted way. But still, there is margin to do more than what we are doing today. On preparedness on integration sectoral programs in disaster risk management, absolutely I absolutely agree with this.
And this is something also that we say in our study, that, as we say, there is a new thinking. There is a new thinking on how to deal with climate disasters, more integrated approaches. This has to be integrated at the level of the EU budget, but the EU budget can also be an instrument to try to instill this new thinking at the national level. So maybe, we can also use, for instance, with the new national plans in which you have also reforms attached to these national plans, you can also use the EU budget, the EU funds to support national reforms in the way of programming, disaster prevention investments. I'm just looking at other things on, yeah, I think that was more or less it.
Just to say on monitoring, that has also been highlighted. Maybe we have not said because we didn't have the time to present all the findings, but this is something that can be good in the next MFF that we have this single monitoring framework that will allow also the parliament and everyone to better track the use of EU funds in support of climate resilience or climate prevention in a more harmonized way, because you have a single one in which you will have, you know, the big picture of how much we spend on that. At the same time, as Ian West said, there's an inner intention between the willingness to mainstream, preparedness by design and also the demands to single out on how much we how much dedicated funds we have on that. I mean, there is a conceptual inner intention in that. If we mainstream everywhere, and this is also something that comes from some studies, the countries that at the national level mainstream climate prepare not climate preparedness.
Sorry. Disaster preparedness, they have more difficulties also to track how much funds they invest in that because, by definition, all the funds are mainstream according to this objective. Just to highlight this in your intention. And I leave the floor to Ian.
Ian Beck
Alright. Thank you. First on Croatia, I think we all know that the earthquakes in Zagreb and Petrini were devastating. There is one bit of comparative good news for Croatia, which is if a future disaster on a similar scale happens, Croatia will more easily be able to access stage three of the cascade mechanism because its economy is relatively smaller. I'm not sure that's much consolation, but it's something.
And you'll see we cover this in pages 53 and 54 of the report. Senora Gomesh, I think that the Solidarity Fund is limited, but it has expanded. I think that expansion has been a recognition that it is needed. I think it'd be ambitious to think it can cover economic damage beyond the area where the disaster occurs, because that's really a macroeconomic response as opposed to a direct one in relation to the disaster that's happened. Your logic is correct.
It has effects well beyond the region where it occurs. However, I think we have to recognize the limitations of the EU budget, which, let's be blunt, is not going to increase much beyond 1.2 percentage points of GNI. So there's only so much you can do. So, Olivera, I'm being very quick here. You're absolutely right about the procedures.
The procedures get in the way of dealing with disasters, and they take a long time. In the existing EU Solidarity Fund, there have been awards of money of less than €1,000,000, several. You can look at the list. And having all this procedure, going to the budgetary authority for that is not exactly sensible, to put it politely. So, therefore, I think the simplification of procedures is necessary.
However, somewhere faced with a disaster is dealing with all kinds of things simultaneously, and the experience is that it takes, it was initially ten weeks in the first iteration of the EUSF, then it became twelve. Now the proposal is that submission should be done within four months of the disaster happening. And this is because it takes time to do the paperwork, some of which is necessary because you need to estimate damage before you can work on how to deal with damage. The commission has said that it will do its utmost to respond within 15 working days. Now I don't know about you, but my working days sometimes are seven a week.
I think the commission probably means 5 days a week. So in practice, that's gonna be three or four weeks before you get a response. If it then has to go to the budgetary authority, however quickly the budget is able to process this, that's an extra stage of time. So there are questions there about the sequence of administrative steps as well as the monitoring, as well as the other things you highlighted that need to be considered. Now I would suggest that you add to the list of questions you should be demanding unambiguous answers from on the commission on exactly how the EU facility will work.
Will the budgetary authority be involved or not? It's not that clear. We've tried very hard in various ways to answer this. So I think it's worth exploring it. The restore facility was something which enabled the member states to use some of their structural fund allocations after 2020 to deal with natural disasters.
It worked, and you can see that it's really been translated into stages one and two of the cascade. They are de facto restored beasts. Do you involve the restore? So that's something that is going to change. However, how that functioned and whether it took away from the money that was available in the structural funds, the cohesion funds for other policy was not part of our investigation.
So we simply can't give you an answer on whether it had a destructive effect. The theory is there. Yes. If you take it away from building roads or bridges to spend on disasters, then there are fewer roads and bridges being built. But we cannot give you evidence on that.
I'm afraid that was not part of our study. Madam, you mentioned that the cascade is taking away from solidarity. You'll be pleased to hear.
I'm going to speak in French.
Which is. So there is a there there's something to it. I think it's maybe a bit harsh on the commission to call it this, but it's a change of approach, because it's inverting the order. Where Restore came along to help the EUSF, now Restore is going to be used before the EUSF in its new guys in the facility. So I think it's something that does question how much solidarity these proposals have.
Emphasize the word solidarity. This is all part of the story. Now this is gonna be a difficult one, but I'll try. Mister Rizhanska. I think the quality of the spending, again, is not something that we were able to give you any strong evidence on.
We do know that the efforts on spending have been increased. Now whether they're buying the wrong firefighting equipment, the wrong airplanes is something I think is for the auditors and the committee to attack rather than us because we cannot tell one firefighting plane from another, I'm afraid. Thank you.
Janusz Lewandowski
Thank you for your presentation and your answers. And clear that prevention is coming first, that is climate adaptation, then eventually financial assistance. The list of speakers was indicating which part of Europe is most affected because this was Spanish, Portugal, and Croatia. Of course, also France and Poland activated today. Yes?
Ian Beck
I would point out that the biggest contributions from the EU Solidarity Fund went to Italy over all this existence.
Janusz Lewandowski
Yes. Not present till today, but we are looking forward to your third part, number three, that is a cost of nonintervention. I mister Ian Bach Berg, I know you for some time. Therefore, allow me a very short comment at the end. Today, we are voting one more globalization fund for displaced workers.
Recently, very sad story of famous in the past, motorcycle factory now operations moved to India and China. But for this, we have clear cut diagnosis and recommendation in letter and in Draghi. But today, also, in our vocabulary, it was so often about resistance, security, military mobility, and this militarization of the budget. So I know that our next request from the Center for European Policy Status should be about prevention and reaction to the geopolitical disasters because we are living in such an environment now, unfriendly geopolitical environment. Once more, thank you for your presence and comments.
With this, we end the session. Today, this was really an extensive day for members of the budget committee, but this is final minute. Thank you.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.