EU: Reducing the risk of devastating floods such as those that hit Prague and Dresden two years ago demands more co-operation across Europe, EU ministers said yesterday.
Environment ministers, meeting in Maastricht, Netherlands, gave their backing to a Commission proposal calling for member-states to collaborate on flood prevention.
"After seeing all of these catastrophes in the different European countries, we can't keep putting this off," Ms Melanie Schultz van Haegen, Dutch state secretary for water management, told a news conference.
"We received broad support for the Commission proposal to have a European approach. The sea and rivers don't take any notice of national borders," she said.
In a proposal released last week, the Commission called for EU states to focus on rivers at their sources so that problems are not passed on to downstream areas. It also proposed creating "flood risk maps", which would pinpoint traditionally high-risk flooding areas and be used in flood contingency planning. The Commission will assemble a flood action plan for further consideration later this year.
More than 100 major floods hit Europe between 1998 and 2002, the Commission said. About 700 people died as a result of those floods and about 500,000 were displaced.
The Commission said felling forests and rerouting rivers has increased flood risks. It added that rising sea levels and greater rainfall intensity - both symptoms of climate change - would continue to raise the risk in the coming decades.