Title page
Contents
ABSTRACT 2
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 5
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 8
1. INTRODUCTION 11
2. TOOLS AND MECHANISMS FOR NATURAL DISASTERS 14
2.1. The European Union Solidarity Fund 14
2.1.1. Initialization period 2002 and time until 2014 14
2.1.2. Reform of the Fund 2014-2020 Period 16
2.1.3. The coronavirus pandemic and EUSF 18
2.2. The Emergency Aid Reserve 20
2.3. Merging the EUSF and EAR: The MFF 2021-2027 21
2.4. EU Civil Protection Mechanism 23
2.5. Cohesion Policy 25
3. RECENT USE OF THE EUSF 27
3.1. Case Studies 28
3.1.1. Croatia Earthquake 2020/2021 28
3.1.2. Western Europe Flooding 2021 29
3.1.3. Spain: La Palma Volcano 2021 31
4. ASSESSMENT OF THE SOLIDARITY AND EMERGENCY AID RESERVE 32
4.1. Contingent Liabilities of the EU Budget 33
4.2. The EUSF and COVID-19 35
4.3. Past Performance of the EUSF and Storylines 39
4.4. Capitalization Levels and Risk of SEAR 43
4.5. SEAR and Other Instruments 45
5. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS 49
6. CONCLUSION 52
REFERENCES 54
ANNEX A: CATSIM METHODOLOGY 57
ANNEX B: IMPACT OF STORYLINES ON THE EUSF CAPITAL 58
ANNEX C: SCENARIO DESIGN FOR SEAR 59
Table 1. Changes from the pre-2014 to post-2014 EUSF reforms 17
Table 2. EUSF contribution to states due to major public health emergency since 2020 19
Table 3. Emergency Aid Reserve Use and Further Information 21
Table 4. Governments' explicit and implicit, direct and contingent liabilities 34
Table 5. Detailed Information on the EUSF payments between 2014 and 2020 40
Figure 1. Economic losses from disasters caused by natural hazards(원문불량) 12
Figure 2. Percentage of total EUSF support (2002-2020) per disaster type and according to disaster category (i.e. magnitude) 16
Figure 3. Union Civil Protection Mechanism Assistance Procedure 24
Figure 4. Union civil protection mechanism activations by hazard type 25
Figure 5. Total EU financing under the different ESIF (2014-2020) in current prices 26
Figure 6. Fiscal Gap Return Period for the baseline 2018 scenario (above, a) and Covid scenario 2021 (below, b) 37
Figure 7. Historical EUSF pay-out data (bars) and simulated capital (black line) for the 2002-2018 period in million Euros 41
Figure 8. Simulation of capital using historical (solid black line) and downward counterfactuals pay-outs (dotted black line). The dotted red line indicates zero capital levels 42
Figure 9. SEAR budget allocation illustration 44
Figure 10. Selected Criteria and Indicators 46
Annex Tables
Table C1. Details of three scenarios of Year 1 60
Table C2. Selected scenarios of SEAR budget plan 62
Annex Figures
Figure B1. Effects on EUSF capital if historic and counterfactual tropical cyclones happened in a hypothetical future. The two 4D heat-maps show the effect of future... 58
Figure C1/Figure C2. Sketch showing the design of 9 scenarios of SEAR budget plan over two years 61