BRUSSELS.- The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, asked the European Union this Wednesday to accelerate the implementation of aid mechanisms to support the reconstruction of places affected by DANA in Spain, even with the diversion of funds originally planned to overcome the effects of the pandemic.
The European Union has to “open up” to the search for “solutions” that speed up support for the reconstruction of places affected by DANA in Spain, said the socialist García-Page in a special session of the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions (CdR) on the storm in Spain, in which the presidents of the Valencian Community, Catalonia, Catalonia and Andalusia have also intervened.
For the Castilian-Manchego president, the emergency fund for catastrophes that the EU has planned is insufficient. For this reason, he has asked that aid be accelerated and that cohesion funds intended for other objectives are usedincluding the funds that were dedicated to the pandemic, for the reconstruction of places destroyed by this fall’s storm.
“We have come to demand this aid and to ask, furthermore, that in all the reflections of the European Union on the flexibility of funds, on the different ones that affect us, cohesion funds, the New Generation, regional funds, it can be established In this flexibility there is also an implementation of speed mechanisms in the event of emergencies,” he noted.
The president of Castile-La Mancha specified that “there is a European competition fund that has to be put in place, but there is also the possibility of opening up to these solutions through other mechanisms.”
After thanking the enormous “outpouring of solidarity” received by the four Spanish regions affected by DANA, García-Page highlighted that “there are many autonomous communities, regions, municipalities in Europe that have not forgotten what is to be called Union”.
“On the 30th anniversary of this Committee of the Regions, we come to draw attention (…) to a misfortune, probably one of the most serious that Spain has had in the last 50 years. We are all victims of adversity. If we are not now, we are potentially,” he warned the representatives of regional and local authorities in Europe.
And he added: “The foundations of the European Union are basically those of mutual aid. Many of us have helped each other since our existence, because we really have the greatest period of peace and peaceful coexistence that this continent has ever had.”
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart. We Spaniards have felt the heart of a European, as we have never hesitated in Spain to offer it when tragedies have come to us from other places. Thank you very much,” García-Page concluded his speech at the plenary session.
The president of Castilla-La Mancha made these requests and thanks at the beginning of the 163rd plenary session held by the Committee of the Regions, which opened with a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of DANA.
In this special session, to which García-Page attended accompanied by the second vice president of the Communities Board, José Manuel Caballero, the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, also spoke; while the regional leaders of the Valencian Community and Andalusia, Carlos Mazón and Juanma Moreno, have addressed the plenary session electronically.
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