Debate contributions by Younous OMARJEE

The next item is the debate on the Commission statement on the EU response to the Mpox epidemic and the need for continued action [2024/2801(RSP)].

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost I would like to express our full solidarity with all the countries hit, the local authorities, the regional authorities who are on the bridge at the moment to help, and then our condolences to the families who have suffered. I remember that in 2021, I was at this podium, after the floods in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium that killed 300 people. Our European Parliament then adopted a number of reports and advocated a number of measures, precisely in order to be able to transform the European Union Solidarity Fund, which today is neither budgeted nor adapted to this new reality. It is unbearable for the people of the European Union who are victims of these floods that the Union's intervention sometimes comes a year later, and that local and regional territories are destitute. We must therefore make this reform of the European Union Solidarity Fund without delay, and we must also engage in genuine regional climate adaptation strategies. I want to tell you that this is a permanent new deal that is ahead of us. Year after year, floods, cyclones, fires, and all sectors of regional development are affected by these disasters. All our efforts to build, in particular, infrastructure with the ERDF are grounded because these infrastructures are not resilient, and we then rebuild them with the ERDF. The cost of inaction is indeed extremely high. Thus, in the European Union's Green Deal and climate policies, everything is based on a single pillar: that of mitigation, and we have forgotten adaptation. Adaptation to global warming is not, Commissioner, just for the ACP countries. Today, European countries are directly concerned by a major policy of adaptation to global warming. Otherwise, we will enter a period of very serious danger because Europe is the continent that is warming the most in the world.