EU Special Representative Lars-Gunnar Wigemark spoke today at a conference on the progress of the 2014 flood recovery donors’ conference. In his remarks, Ambassador Wigemark announced that the EU would be providing additional funding to BiH and Serbia for both reconstruction and flood prevention.
At the event which brought together representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, the European Union, and international organisations including the United Nations (UNDP) and the World Bank, Ambassador Wigemark said that the 42 million Euro and 30 million for BiH and Serbia respectively would be followed by a further 41 million Euro (BiH) and 62 million Euro (Serbia) to further support flood recovery and flood risk management. He underlined that the joint goal for the future is to avoid that similar or other disasters cause such devastation to human beings, the environment, cultural heritage, as well as to communities and to economic activities….
“That’s why I think that this conference should not only try to track and analyse the progress that has been achieved given the many pledges from donors made in July last year, we should also look at how we can take preventive action so to prevent future disasters from having such devastating effects. We cannot prevent disasters from occurring of course, but we can become better at dealing with them.
