The European Commission presented the first EU Plan against flooding last week. In the last six years alone, flooding has caused 700 victims, 500,000 homeless and damages estimated at 25 billion euros in the EU. Two considerations lie at the basis of the Plan. First, generalized climate changes have caused a growth in the phenomena of inundation and flooding in Europe too. Second, Brussels and the member states have ascertained the partial ineffectiveness of individual national measures to contain disasters that normally do not respect frontiers, thus emphasizing the need to “prevent the problems being transferred from one area to another”. The Plan therefore aims to re-establish the past hydrogeological equilibrium, thanks to structural interventions against deforestation and the diversion of watercourses, and also through a new cartographic survey of the zones traditionally more exposed to risk and the exchange of information and know-how between the countries of the Union. At the present time only Austria, Finland, Ireland, Holland and Spain have specific anti-flooding legislation.
