TSUNAMI IMPACT: Reconstruction to Top EU Summit

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Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jan 6 2005 (IPS) - Preventive and reconstruction aid to the Asian countries hit by the tsunami will top the agenda at an emergency meeting of EU foreign, health and development ministers Friday.

Ministers are also expected to approve a higher European Union (EU) aid package for reconstruction announced by European Commission president José Manuel Barroso at an emergency international summit in Jakarta Thursday..

Barroso’s commitment takes the Commission’s aid commitment to nearly 600 million dollars, and the combined aid pledges by the EU executive and the bloc’s 25 member states to around 2 billion dollars.

Playing down fears that the tsunami pledges may detract from the EU’s work with other developing countries, Barroso said the Commission’s budget would have to be reworked to accommodate the new pledge.

Barroso also proposed a 1.3 billion dollar concessional loan for reconstruction through the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s financing institution.

This loan would dedicate a long-term lending facility "on favourable terms to help finance the reconstruction efforts," Barroso said. The facility would be implemented in close coordination with the European Commission, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, he said.

"We must ensure that there is a seamless transition from the current humanitarian support to a second phase of rehabilitation and reconstruction," he said. "This work will take several years and we will only know the final costs when the needs assessments currently underway are finalised."

Speaking at the same meeting Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country took over presidency of the EU last week, said the EU would "do all it can" to support Asian efforts to set up a regional early warning system to detect earthquakes and alert populations to potential tidal waves.

Juncker said the Friday meeting would also be an "opportunity to address both immediate relief including supplies and health concerns as well as longer term challenges such as prevention, rehabilitation and reconstruction aspects."

EU ministers are also due to hear reports by Luxembourg minister for cooperation and humanitarian action Jean-Louis Schiltz, and EU development and humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel who have been visiting regions worst hit by the tsunami.

The emergency summit will also be attended by senior UN and World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives.

The European Parliament stressed Thursday (Jan. 6) that promises of aid must be realised in delivery on the ground.

"Alongside looking at how we respond to the immediate humanitarian needs, we also need to look further ahead," said president of the European Parliament Josep Borrell. "Reconstruction of damaged regions will be a massive task and we must also make sure that a human tragedy on this scale can never happen again."

Borrell said such a commitment would be a "complex task" for the EU, as well as for other donors. Any "multi-annual pledge" for the tsunami disaster from the EU would involve first finding money from the existing budgets for 2005-6, he said.

"Furthermore, it will involve trying to ring fence funds from the overall budgets for 2007 and beyond," he said. "Joint decisions by Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council will be necessary but I can already say that the goodwill exists in the Parliament to find a solution provided that we do not try to take funds from other important reconstruction work from which the media spotlight has already vanished."