 move on the debate on preparing for and dealing with crisis, strengthening the resilience of the Union, its regions and cities. I would like to welcome our gas speaker, Commissioner Yanez Lenartik, for being here today and thank him for having accepted our invitation. I also have the pleasure to introduce Christophe Lergeau, our member, and thank him for joining us in this very important debate. As you know, Christophe is the rapporteur of the opinion on this issue, so thank you, thank you so much for both of you. Commissioner Lenartik, I think we have previous to your intervention, we have a video, is that correct? The video may enter. There is no country in Europe where the impact of climate change cannot be seen and felt. From floods to forest fires, from torrential rains to droughts, extreme climate events are threatening people and the economy all over the EU. Urgent steps are needed to better anticipate natural disasters and tackle the consequences of climate change. Regents and cities are doing their part, combining long-term vision and concrete actions. Commissioner Lenartik, you have the floor for 10 minutes. Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, I will start with my thoughts being these days with the people of Northern Italy, where severe floods, the overflowing rivers and landslides have struck the Emilia-Romagna region. Immediately after we received a request for assistance from the Italian authorities, nine EU member states offered assistance through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. This is our tool for a swift and coordinated response in emergencies, through which we support regions and communities in the time of crisis. And one of those that is now offering help to Italy is Belgium. Two years ago, local communities in large parts of Belgium were also devastated by flooding. Flooding that took lives, that wrecked livelihoods and destroyed hundreds of homes. In Belgium's time of need, over 150 rescuers from Italy, from France and Austria rushed to the aid of communities in Liege and Limburg, thanks to the Union Civil Protection Mechanism again. Or last summer, when Europe suffered one of the worst wildfire seasons in recent history. Wildfires that shattered communities, ruined lives and livelihoods, and burned an area that is several times the size of, for instance, the Rome capital region or the Madrid capital region. In response, over 350 firefighters and many planes from a number of EU member states were deployed to help national emergencies in 12 regions across Europe, from Albania to Portugal. So in short, today, Europe faces an increasing number of systematic cross-border and cross-sectoral challenges. And they are all exacerbated by what I would call, by what I would call climate crisis. Not just change, but crisis. To illustrate, over the past decade, activations of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism in response to emergencies have risen by an average of 350%. Last year alone, this mechanism was mobilized over 320 times, with about half of these activations coming from Ukraine, due to the criminal Russian invasion of the country. At the time when the crisis we face are globally interlinked and have global impact, we must make sure that we are also focused on the local level. This is where the people are, and this is where the effects of disasters are felt. It is citizens and regions who are witnessing the realities of these changes and these dangers, because every activation of the mechanism is another community crisis. It's another neighborhood hit by disaster. As disasters increase in frequency and intensity, the EU is stepping up to help communities across Europe and beyond. But we are not dealing only with the response to disasters. The mechanism focuses also on disaster preparedness, on national prevention actions and the exchange of best practices, because we can only protect communities by building a stronger and more resilient future together. And this is why we have established the five European disaster resilience goals. They are designed to enable regions to anticipate and to withstand future emergencies. They cross sector, they cross border to save lives and better protect local areas. But of course these goals are nothing if they are not implemented. And for this we have introduced five flagship initiatives, one each for each goal. The first goal is to better anticipate. We should better anticipate future disasters by developing Europe-wide disaster scenarios so as to support planning and preparedness for major emergencies. Second goal is to better prepare. We will boost the preparedness of communities by launching the so-called prepare EU. This is a pan-European awareness raising program for disaster resilience targeting wider population. The third goal is alert. With this we want to build more effective early warning systems and especially to link them to local action. Fourth, respond. We want to ensure that the mechanism is well-equipped to provide the support that is needed also by scaling up the rescue strategic reserve of response capacities. And fifth goal is to secure the functioning of civil protection systems that are secure from disasters and for that purpose we will organize stress testing of the emergency operation centers throughout Europe. I'm very much encouraged to see that the Committee of the Region already has disaster resilience very high on your agenda, including in the opinion prepared by the rapporteur Klerzow, which I read with great interest. And I see that you want to examine how you can enhance social preparedness, how you can better understand risks and vulnerabilities and how you would build a cross-border culture of prevention. And these are all the goals that we fully share. And as I said what is important is that we not only have the goals but we embark on implementation and in this your support is a key to success because without the efforts of local and regional authorities we cannot simply, they cannot reach the communities who need protection. It is the local and regional authorities that know best the risks on the ground. You have the power to engage with the local communities and you are the ones who hold the line when disaster hits. So I would be asking you to work together with national authorities to implement the flagship initiatives in your region to adapt them to your specific situation to make them your own simply and to bring the disaster resilience goals to the lives of your people. There are many ways how you can put these initiatives into practice, for instance by upgrading your local risk assessment, by stress-testing your local disaster scenarios and building new partnership across sectors and across geographic borders of your regions and towns. This requires of course cooperation. There are many ways we can cooperate, take the prepared EU as we prepare to launch this program. There is much that you can learn from your collective experience and of course also we would want to learn about how to engage with local communities. In short we want to hear your input. Investing in resilience is not only crucial for creating communities that are prepared for disasters of tomorrow, it also strengthens and improves the communities today by generating economic, social and environmental benefits and strengthening the public budget because preparation ahead of a disaster is up to 10 times cheaper than what you need to repair afterwards if you are not well prepared. We already see localized resilience in action in communities across Europe. Let me share with you some of the examples that we that we like for instance in Greece. This is one of the many Mediterranean coastal communities building resilience to tsunamis thanks also to the support from our civil protection mechanism by raising risk awareness of the local population by organizing drills and by developing alert systems. Or another example is from Portugal, the city of Matuzinus. It has introduced a localized strategy for fighting wildfires. They increased capacity of the fire brigade. They raised awareness on fire risk and they enhanced forest management. And this is already producing results as local areas have now fewer wildfires than in the past. So achieving our resilience goals will be a team effort and we certainly do not expect you to do this alone. We will be there on the ground to help and work with you. We will talk to you. We will go into schools. We want to build a clear pathways towards more resilient future. EU offers a range of instruments to support you with investment and work problems on disaster resilience not only through our civil protection mechanism but also through the cohesion policy. And in this context I would like in particular to welcome an element from your report where you state that you would like to make crisis resilience a political and programming priority for cohesion policy. I think this is a very good, good call. Thank you so much for your attention. Looking forward to the discussion. Christophe, Rapporteur, you have the floor for five minutes. Thank you chair. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you commissioner for being here and for putting your team from DGECO behind all this hard work for months. You mentioned that crises are coming faster and faster. I'd add that these aren't just linked to climate change but also health crises. They're also linked to conflicts of all kinds and we might have to deal with nuclear fallouts or biowarfare. So we're starting from the principle that we don't know what the next crisis will be but that we will know who the first victims will be because crisis is primarily humanitarian and its impact depends on how society is organized and its most fragile members are often the first victims. Public services, community solidarity and infrastructure are all key elements. So we want to have societal preparedness. So the ability to organize society to face crises with solidarity and cohesion in the best way possible and it's this idea of collective preparation which seems important to invest in right now. So you need a cross-cutting global approach within the commission as well. You are responsible for civil protection but the links also with security as a whole and food security, these links are essential. We are just getting out of the COVID crisis but in order for this cross-cutting work to be achievable it would be useful to have a platform that would unite every aspect of society and the institutions as well in order to be able to work globally. As you mentioned it's important to know our vulnerabilities to reduce them and to prevent crises it's important to reduce vulnerabilities. There exists the vulnerability scoreboard, a vulnerability index and this is a very important tool. It helps us describe the risks on a global, regional and local level and we are volunteers to test this tool on a local level to see if it corresponds to information from gathered locally and how it can be best used. In the spirit of preparation for crises as you said it's important to put idea of vulnerability at the heart of future cohesion policy. It has to be legitimised but it also has to be an element born in mind when coming up with finances why not make it a specific department. I'd like to give a few examples of suggestions and proposals that we make in the context of disaster resilience goals that you mentioned. First as you said there are very specific areas of concrete partnerships and perhaps this could create a formal partnership between the Committee of Regents and the Commission on this topic. Why would this be good? Well we would be a lot more useful if we're better invested in the knowledge network created by DGECO. We could also mobilize for the prepare EU projects and we want this to be a truly European project. We want cities and smaller regions to be present and be able to give their opinion and their proposals to DGECO. We've also made specific proposals to better train young people not just in first aid but also in the correct attitudes to have in situations of danger or crisis. We want that to be a Europe-wide promotion of good citizenship because in France this exists with the Red Cross but it depends on the country. We also want to create a European school of risks and crises. In names in France there is already the beginnings of such a school to minimize risks and crises. To wrap up this is a new political question. We need to be better organized to better manage crises. We think that you've done a lot in this field but we really need to prepare our communities and create a shared culture of prevention to stop the worst of the crises. Now we go to political groups. Member Sirio, you have the floor for two minutes. President, Commissioner, thank you very much. Thank you on behalf of Italy and my colleagues in Emilia Romagna for all the solidarity that has been expressed at the start of the work by the Bureau yesterday, by the President of the Committee and today by the Commissioner. European peoples over the last few years have been faced with an increasing number of crises which have really impacted the daily lives of millions of citizens. Our society is advanced and complex but it's shown itself to be fragile and unprepared in some areas, unprepared to deal with new and unknown crises like the recent Covid pandemic, drought in areas which previously were rich in water but also in the face of better known disasters and crises such as the recent floods in Emilia Romagna. I am the President of the Piedmont region and we're on two weeks high alert for possessible possible rain damage but we're also faced with a problem of drought. It's incredible situation on the one hand we have droughts on the other hand we have floods. Fortunately my region in the past has always been able to invest in the upkeep of its territory and the protection of its lands. A lot of work was done thanks to the crises of 1990s and 2000s and we've been better equipped to deal with the problems we face with today but often we find that funds are used for other purposes whether it's cross-border funds, there's cohesion funds to secure our cities and areas which could perhaps be used also elsewhere and that's why we think we need the specific dedicated funds to make sure that we are better protected. Here you have the floor for one minute for two minutes. Thank you Mr President, the Commissioner. I will continue in German. So next time I'll. First of all we all know that the risk of crisis is increasing climate change is already here we're right in the middle of it we're seeing fall fires floods all sorts landslides the risks of pandemics is also increased through globalization and many more so we need risk analyses we need a scoreboard for weaknesses and we need appropriate infrastructure risk plans which can react and as well as setting up the necessary infrastructure protection for buildings and so on but essentially we need a shared approach which involves the community and here the role of cities and regions is decisive particularly because we can include volunteers for example in South Tyrol my region there's more than a half a million inhabitants and 20 000 volunteers are working in civil protection and so this helped us during the pandemic but also whenever there are natural disasters and it's important to involve the community to create a culture of risk management and awareness of risk situations and particularly in highlighting the importance of volunteerism and increasing the commitment of volunteers because this ensures that a lot more can be done as we have seen from past events in our region thank you. On your Mazeo two minutes. Commissioner, President, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen thank you for the attention that you are paying to what is happening so terribly in Emilia Romagna and to some extent also in Tuscany where I'm from the pictures that we're seeing and that we've all been struck by have all been due to climate change in 36 hours we have the same precipitation that we would normally have in six months in Emilia Romagna 15 people have died 20 000 people have been displaced six billion euros worth of damage and that's just an estimate at the moment in Mugello in the Tuscany area that I come from we've seen a little bit of this as well 200 landslides some communities which have been completely isolated allow me if I may to stress what was said by the commissioner before the need for solidarity once again Europe has to show what Europe can do and it's doing that I would like to thank the volunteers from the civil protection groups Italians but also people from across Europe we need help for companies for families and it's going to be vital that we be able to access the European Solidarity Fund if we're going to be able to overcome this emergency this is true for the emergency situation we find ourselves in now but as the commissioner has said we also have to work on a climate pact and a prevention plan to make sure that Italy and Europe as a whole are properly protected prevention has to be the keyword often that's not the case we're often running behind the curve we need a European plan to make sure that we can secure our territory to make our infrastructure resilient and to protect our communities what we need is a proposal that I'm making to you now which I hope we're taken aboard by the Italian government and then by Europe let's make sure that we use the national recovery and resilience plans which funds which can't be used could be used for prevention plans it's an inversion of the paradigm that we need to have member Peter Kaiser two minutes thank you thank you very much commissioner and thank you commissioner Lecharch it's I agree with the five priorities which have set out it's an important direction we're going and we need to focus on these measures in Europe we're living through a number of crises and I think it's clear that overcoming these crises together means that our future will depend on cross-border cooperation in our regions and so it's the duty of everyone all politicians and everyone throughout the regions to create the necessary framework for cooperation in disaster protection I would like to give the example of my region we're working very closely with our Italian counterparts in the region of Venice but we're also working with the Republic of Slovenia and we're working across these borders and it's important that we look at the prevention of crises and involve this in further EU programs we want to have measures for a safer climate policy for example type measure such as those in the green deal de-risking removing the dependence on areas which are at risk we need to solve these problems at a European level locally and regionally overall I think and this is a further point that we must have international inter-regional projects at a European level in the past for example we had a situation in our region where Slovenia and in Italy they were able to get water from Carinthia and use that for putting out fires so this is the kind of thing that we need in future more international projects thank you very much thank you member caputo three minutes grazie thank you very much president thank you commissioner for europe given the problem of climate change and the various international crises we're faced with these are things the entire european continent will have to deal with we're going to be hard put to it in terms of crisis management and promoting resilience which will be required by the different member states to deal with all the challenges facing the various regions and making communities more really resilient has to be one of the political priorities of the european union and the committee of the regions we need proper cooperation between the european regions to promote resilience and de-risking which is going to be key if we're going to be able to deal with the threats and find common solutions to the challenges that we're living through we have to make sure that we have a different approach we have to have a promotion of synergies between regions nation states and european union with a greater level of ambition shown by the institutions climate change is significantly changing the future of entire economic systems including of our agriculture this is particularly true of the Mediterranean area they're going to find a self-face with major changes in product quality and production and methods we have to be able to find a constructive approach we need to find a way of talking with stakeholders about the true prospects of strengthening resilience in the different regions this has to be based on a number of key points which can then be developed into strategic guidelines enabling us to better protect the future of our different territories and I think we could do nothing better than to start on the basis of the NAAT opinion which will be submitted in a couple of weeks on strengthening resilience of the european union and its regions and cities we think this could be an important instrument in promoting open and honest discussions on the needs for EU intervention and to put forward specific proposals on how we can strengthen resilience at the local and regional level the member states work better together than individually at the european union level we need to develop and strengthen different support measures to help people deal with the risks and better manage risks and crises tailored to regional needs to have a virtuous process of strengthening EU resilience or EU wide thank you very much thank you so much member marcilio you have the floor for two and a half minutes la residenza resilience is going to be key in public policy in the future and we as the ecr keys to see that this is being done whether it's earthquakes forest fires or floods there alarm bells showing what climate change will do in the future the way more are more in the way of these sorts of disasters my region in 2009 as you saw in the video this is the abruz area had a an earthquake which caused hundreds of deaths and we had another more the smaller earthquake in 2017 we've been doing a lot of work but we are very vulnerable to these sorts of disasters and i would also like to thank everybody for the solidarity that is being shown to us for the floods in amelia romania and the other areas the local and regional authorities have to define and advance their strategies because they need to be able to act immediately in emergency situations and communities can't be left alone actions of member states can come out can help to limit down the limit damages thanks to the european civil protection mechanism nine countries were able to send equipment to amelia romania to pump the waters out of the flooded areas technical assistance has been fired there's been training to help the regions in the communities to deal with these phenomena better in the future we need closer attention to be paid to prevention policies which are going to be necessary to increase the level of resilience in the face of risks which are not always foreseeable furthermore we need to be able to strengthen cooperation between european regions the disasters no no borders and they're becoming stronger and more ferocious and in the recent earthquake which struck in turkey europe was again able to show solidarity and i'm proud the fact that my own region was able to send help to the people of turkey through the civil protection mechanism we if we have a long-term policy along these lines it will not only save money but more importantly it will save many lives thank you member cobor you have the floor for two minutes dear colleagues the european union is is confronted with an an increasing number of crisis with growing complexity causing suffering and other devastating consequences improving the aius capacity in crisis management has become on all the essential issues to ensure the aius is able to respond quickly we need to ensure that the first reaction in crisis every time is locally so it is an important part of the subsidiarity uh being a green i have to say that 50 years after the first prediction of the club club of from we will and we are leaving now in the chaotic world and we're environmentally economically socially being a physicist we also need to be prepared for any accidents which may happen and cause it for instance radiation and other kind of contamination in we hope that chernobyl will never again happen but we need to be prepared in this case the best preparation is prevention in technology and very openly we have to speak about war situations when industrial facilities inclusive nuclear facilities got into bombing as it was in Yugoslavia in the 90s and as it is today in Ukraine and Russia and radioactive contamination because because of using depleted urinary munition etc etc i agree that we need a vision that integrates both risk management and crisis management the european union can also play a rule in training decision and policy makers to coordinate and manage crisis in result and efficient and this is the european response to crisis can only improve improve citizens perception and trust of the a u thank you thank you member fray two minutes commissioner president thank you very much we've heard some very all terrible news from north italy but there are also other regions affected by floods a number of people have lost their lives others lost their belongings their homes and the consequences won't be overcome tomorrow there will be other consequences which will continue to be felt over months and years so we shouldn't just be thinking about this today but also long into the long term and ultimately we also need to tackle the causes a lot has a lot of time has been wasted in the past and now we're paying for this dearly we have to tackle human made climate change and ensure that it's reduced because otherwise disasters will be increasing in EU we must improve crisis management and work in a spirit of solidarity therefore we all so how we need functioning functioning european projects which will increase cross border solidarity for example what we saw in the coven 19 pandemic i'm very pleased that in germany we were able to take in patients from abroad and also we were able to benefit from intensive care beds abroad when that was short in germany we want to ensure that we overcome unnecessary borders and barriers at the borders so i would commissioner like to say that make sure that you tackle crisis provisions in border regions if we can increase the effectiveness this we can strengthen the EU as a whole thank you member turley you have the floor for one minute good afternoon mr commissioner you are a brave man you took this mandate because crisis have become a daily phenomenon phenomenon we are practically living under crisis circumstances in the EU we are trying to solve this issue as an issue in the EU at three levels so we have the EU level national and the local level we represent municipalities here i think it would be very very important to limit the area of competence of each of this level of governance this would allow us to better understand the problem and to find the best solution you are used to working with scientists in your work you are inviting scientists to develop crisis strategy this is really commendable effort we certainly also need to earmark resources that ability and look at professionalism thank you thank you i come from Croatia i'm from a border region which had an earthquake very recently and we were profoundly affected and it's clear that the local and regional authorities play an important role civil protection also plays a vital role as well as the system of police and firemen and various voluntary associations who cooperated to work together and tackle these situations and there is an important sentence which states that good coordination of all services is vital and only if the coordination is good in these difficult situations can we ensure the safety of our citizens we will be able to tackle all these crisis situations so essentially with good quality and good use of financial resources coordination of all bodies then this is the only way we'll be able to put an end to such suffering thank you one minute thank you very much just a week ago i was at home in my county in Croatia but there was a disaster because of the floods a huge amount of rain just fell in one day a lot of material harm was damaged a lot of crops were damaged uh buildings were were harmed and unfortunately uh children were left without the necessary social infrastructure such as schools and daycare so further investments need to be made to ensure that in future all members of our society will be protected and we should draw all the necessary funding from whatever tools exist thank you you have the floor for one minute thank you mr president we face crisis after crisis they are more and more related to climate and environmental issues if we look around ourselves we will see that all the crises are either caused by climate or environment factors or have devastating impact on climate and environment with severe consequences on human beings so crisis prevention and rapid reaction to them become must how do we do that by building capacity to prevent crisis and by establishing effective response mechanisms to reduce their impact to provide rapid response we need to have effective governance mechanisms the overlaps of several plants and instruments in the green deal are not helpful at all we need to streamline them and ensure effective governance mechanism with full involvement of local authorities crisis responses by definition local this is why all the actions must be co-designed with the local authorities which will have to pay the price of non-action and react to emergencies when the crisis breaks out thank you thank you member maruzic you have the floor for one minute ladies gentlemen we're seeing more and more disasters within the EU in Croatia in a very short period of time we suffered from covid but also major floods which happened just a few days ago in my county we are on the border with bosnia and herzegovina and the river sava flows between our regions across 200 kilometers and there has been floods along this river just a few years ago there was a catastrophic flood in the same area the consequences of which were very serious and so we have to work together with our neighbors in bosnia and syria syria we implemented a program to protect those areas from floods and from our experience we've seen how important it is for local authorities to work together to prevent crises and we've also seen that how we can work with countries even when they're not EU members this strengthens all of our communities thank you member dobroslavic you have the floor for one minute thank you very much president thank you very much to the reporter i would like to express my condolences to the people of emilia romania but we've seen that over the recent years we're increasingly being struck by crises the covid-19 pandemic was a global pandemic which was caused a great deal of death and suffering the russian federation's attack on ukraine and on western values it was another terrible event there have been earthquakes particularly in my country Croatia and this is not coming to an end particularly because of climate change which we are experiencing we need to organize ourselves equip ourselves to face the challenges of the future and so in because of the insecurity caused by the covid-19 we we can see that the european union was able to react appropriately and we all appreciate the efforts which were made particularly in my region however we need to be properly equipped and prepared thank you at the floor for one minute member vesley gash you have the floor for one minute thank you very much president at a local and regional level there are all sorts of disasters which are taking place which require a rapid reaction we need to find solutions to these as quickly as possible unfortunately when it comes to such disasters a lot of areas are being affected and in my region we've seen that we're facing a number of uh problems due to flooding and excess rain and our community is therefore at risk as well as the various buildings which have suffered due to flooding there have also been landslides in Croatia so a lot of disasters related to this flows just in the last month so this will be felt throughout the next month i think that prevention needs to be a priority in the future thank you so much member egetus you have the floor for one minute the committee of the regions over recent years we have seen unexpected crises floodings uh and the like and it is to be welcomed that the european union has kick started mechanisms that can support quick reaction however it is our joint interest to do more for prevention and to step up the resilience of municipalities in order to decrease the the weak points we need union resources even distributed between everyone these funds cannot be the tools of ideological or political blackmailing it is our joint interest to act together when it comes to these challenges thank you member walner you have the floor for one minute president raporteur i would like to thank you for having taken up this topic on the agenda it's very important when the committee of the regions that tackles such topics and it's important that the commission recognizes the importance of this we need to structure our discussions about combating these uh phenomena it needs to be tackled in situ ensuring that we can have cross border assistance when necessary but what's really the framework of combating crises is a broader approach which and i think everyone has spoken in in that direction we need greater prevention uh infrastructure more volunteering we should come up with systems where we are less dependent on europe generally and there's where there is greater cooperation within regions we can see for example when we have problems in covet due to lack of masks and medicine we had to come up with other solutions we want to avoid future dependency we need to be able to manage on our own thank you you have the floor for one minute thank you chairman thank you for the solidarity that you immediately expressed for my city and for the territory i belong to i'm from the area around robin which is one of the areas worst hit by the floods that we see in these last weeks the situation remains very difficult there are still many villages and towns where the flooding is still very prevalent the european union has helped and many mers from the region i belong to have asked for me to thank you on their behalf it's a very important thing to talk about today this crisis management issue we're faced with global warming but we've seen a lot of environmentalism a lot of ideology involved which has prevented the work being carried out on the infrastructure that would have enabled those to contain some of the difficulties and problems caused by these funds thank you very much chairman thank you also to the commissioner and to our colleague mr clausio for his opinion and also for the way in which he has managed the work on this opinion in 1852 a french intellectual said governing is foreseeing and not to foresee is to court disaster i think that is very true we're faced with a new challenge today we have them rise to the challenge but we have to be able to do that in accordance with our european values the cohesion fund 30 percent of the cohesion fund goes to emissions reductions only 3 percent goes to crisis management we need to have a new approach we're not waiting for the next programming period we need already to have work on a program which would enable us to work on resilience also the question of who's going to do what the opinion has covered all the different institutional actors we have the regions who carry out action plans you have the communes the communities you have the provinces who act on behalf of all the actors one minute it was in tecumisa president commissioner crisis management is based on five pillars we absolutely need to have preparation fund sustainable funding we need good prevention appropriate measures for example increasing water retention in the land we need quicker intervention when disasters take place we also need the interaction across borders this needs to function properly to overcome such problems as well as cooperation at a european level this is what needs to come on top of everything else what the EU can do this is a concept which can work we need to have an approach from the european level right up to the EU level to have across the board well functioning coordination and prevention thank you you have the floor for one minute thank you very much mr chairman mr commissioner the mechanism for coordination of cooperation is needed at all levels in europe including the role of local governments in developing the programs that are important for the resilience of the EU as a whole local governments are key in terms of services and infrastructure that are needed and often there is extra financial or organizational burden involved which we've seen now during the war on ukraine but also in the pandemic there are also global challenges due to climate change and problems with natural resources financial problems also may make it impossible for local governments to provide services for citizens so we need to collaborate tightly on all levels in the EU and that is the only way to provide a coherent process also including the finances if you have the floor for one minute chair the inventions we've spoken about today are very important steps to a very important policy at the same time it's a fact that member states have their own responsibilities and they can make their own choices during a time of crisis the point I want to make is that in those cases that if neighboring countries make different choices during crises in the future border regions will continue to be aided as we saw during the covid pandemic we need a legal tool which can be used within the European territory to breach any gaps I'm asking the commission to make sure that the European cross border mechanism receives a much needed boost I also want to underline the importance of a testing period to try out methods to help the outmost regions congratulations particularly it's an excellent opinion resilience obviously is a competence of the member states but according to your stat EU citizens expect the EU to be involved once we have a disaster so when that happened in my region in 2017 the civil protection mechanism did work we received a solidarity funding too but of course it would be better to prevent than contract so my call on everybody is that everybody join in in a campaign we have this campaign on disaster risk resilience making citizens resilient this is the best way to find out about the best preparation mechanisms and stress tests and solutions in the EU one minute thank you chair first of all I want to mention our support for the our Italian colleagues who've been affected by these terrible floods we can attest that we are seeing more and more crises which come suddenly and violently and they are very diverse in nature I think right now we're paying for mistakes of the past our collective european management needs to have an integrated systemic approach which is forward-looking and which is shared socially to strengthen healthcare resilience especially especially in cross-border territories islands and overseas territories this was noticed by our rapporteur he did an excellent job will of support him and we congratulate him not just for what he's done here but everything he's done in the committee of regions and we wish him good luck in the european parliament thank you member sir would you mind to just move a little bit you just a little thank you member milana one minute thank you chairman everything has changed and we have to get used to that change if that change is not reversible then we're going to have to adjust our policies so that we ourselves bring about a change commissioner I would like to see you report back to the commission with one thing that we've said here that we have to make sure that we have integrated action we can no longer think of having a CAP the cohesion funds and everything in their own different silos everything has to be a single hole to give you an example hydrological disasters lead to humanitarian disasters as we've seen in Italy well over the last 20 years in my country the woods wooded areas have been doubled why because agriculture has withdrawn from mountainous areas so we should stop funding the agriculture in the plains and triple funding for agriculture in the mountains we need to see a change made member so the silver thank you very much chair commissioner reporter reporter management of crises and social protection as well as a principle of subsidiarity these are all central and local and regional authorities are the ones who have the knowledge of the territory and they have contact with the people affected so they are the first port of call whenever a crisis happens when we look at cohesion funds and support from the EU we see that there is a lot of support to support states in putting money into things that prepare EU to help prepare for crises however the the support is usually channeled towards the central governments and then slowly trickles down to local and regional governments and this doesn't really make a lot of sense for that reason i think there's a duty in the co are to talk to the commission and require all states to provide more support to municipalities so that our response can be more and more efficient and that we can save more lives thank you very much your members now it's my pleasure to give the floor to one of our young elected politicians that you have the floor for one minute thank you very much i would like to speak about the floods in italy and use it as an as an opportunity to talk about how important today's to tackle this because global warming knows no borders just like extreme weather events the floods in emilia romania were not just caused by unexpectedly heavy rain but also because of other super regional factors because of for example the melting of snow in higher regions and so on heat waves droughts floods are becoming increasingly common and stronger and it is no longer sufficient just to react in order to make our regions too resilient we need a real change which takes into account the economical and social aspects too thank you much i don't have any other request for the floor so this gives me the opportunity to give the floor to commissioner lennart cheek for five minutes final remarks thank you very much i will be very quick in view of the lateness of the hour just a couple of points some of you mentioned the importance of volunteers here i have to underline the fact that the organization of civil protection services civil protection system is the prerogative of member states we do not interfere with that however there is a number of member states that have civil protection systems that are largely based on volunteers and we see it as a good practice and we encourage others to look into this good practice of course one should not forget that volunteers need to be very well trained and equipped so as to play a good role in civil protection and that is the case in most of the countries that have this system many of you mentioned the importance of prevention i cannot agree more as i said in my introduction prevention can be up to 10 times more effective and cheaper than than reparation and response if you are not prepared and you also identified that in the opinion mr raporta so what do we do on prevention well this commission has offered european green deal as the overriding overriding prevention strategy because if you want to prevent even worse climate related disasters we need to lower our carbon footprint and we need to reach the goal of carbon neutrality by by reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases and as you know the european commission has set the goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 hopefully we could get there even earlier the sooner the better the sooner we reach that goal the less the less negative impact the further climate crisis will have but of course there are already uh some uh impact of the climate crisis with us as many of you have noted and that can no longer be prevented so what can no longer be prevented requires our better preparation and adaptation and this is the direction in which we want to go with our recommendation on disaster resilience goals and i also know that this is exactly the same direction uh offered or proposed by the opinion prepared by raporta claire joh that is under your consideration today next point uh there should be more europe yes of course that's the whole philosophy of european european um civil protection mechanism it is designed for situations when a country a member state or any third country of the world is hit by a disaster of such dimensions that it overwhelms its own national capacities this is for instance now the case with italy where italy requested assistance and it was uh sent there but there is also very strong added value of european cooperation in cross border situations many of you point to the fact that disasters especially climate related events do not know borders and that's precisely the reason why we need to strengthen further our cooperation also at the european level and uh it is also important to work in a cross sectoral sense i can assure you that we are working very well together with my colleagues commissioners responsible for other areas to illustrate the crisis that is caused by russian invasion on ukraine is a cross sectoral one it's not only strictly civil protection but through union civil protection mechanism we provide also assistance from other sectors not just uh from traditional civil protection that's why we worked very well together for instance with commissioners and we set up together a medical evacuation scheme with the help of uh polish authorities and by now we have evacuated more than 2000 patients and wounded from ukraine to more than 20 countries in europe uh we have also worked together with um commissioners in providing agricultural equipment to ukraine and so on so i could talk about this a lot but i just want to assure you that we are very much conscious of the need to work in a cross sectoral mode also and my final word our cooperation we according to our legal basis are mandated to work with national civil protection authorities but we do have channels to work with you also and there are two channels for the first one is obvious this is between the committee of the regions and european commission i'm here today and this is one of the channels the other channel is and please use it through the national civil protection authorities work with them we have many proposals for corporations and cross border sections between regions and cities that go come to us through the national authorities and we we support them afterwards so i would encourage you to be proactive i very much believe in our working together to reach the common goal which is increased resilience of european citizens thank you thank you so much commissioner thank you for being with us and thank you for sharing um it's been a pleasure now we're going to move 2.8 the um the adoption of the opinion on preparing for and dealing with crisis strengthening the resilience of the union its regions and cities but first i give the floor to christoph for final remarks i don't want if you want to mix the presentation of the opinion remarks ending the and concluding the other debate please go ahead you have the floor thank you president thank you to all the members for intervening in this we all seem to agree i rarely have ever seen so many intervention mobilizes everyone in this way i think this is a very important political issue so this is something we can keep in mind for future work thank you also for the socialist group and the nut group for accompanying me here of course my colleagues team has been leading important developments events three and four years and they are very well placed to create new tools for dg echo just want to make a few comments because clearly well there's only one the object of an oral compromise so there's not much to say thank you to the colleagues who insisted on diversity of the risks and the crises we can't just focus on the risks and crises which are environmental in nature and accelerated by climate change but the two biggest crises we've seen in the past three years are covid and the displacement of five million ukrainians because of russian aggression this has led to massive mobilization uh civic engagement and we don't know which crises we'll have to face tomorrow so yes of course we have to bear the environmental aspect in mind but we also have to think about the uh real stakes and the socio-economic want to thank the commissioner and media now for speaking about the green deal the policies which need to be reformed we need to change our model if agriculture is leaving the ground for if infrastructure is the green if a healthcare system and hospitals are over we have people becoming increasingly even the cities that have damage physical and social need to create a a society which has solidarity and this is completely different from cooperation we need a real program for to reinforce but the cohesion policies propose three