Step to recovery: German government gives millions in flood aid

Germany’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a roughly 400 million-euro ($472 million) package of immediate aid for victims of last week’s floods and vowed to get started quickly on rebuilding the devastated areas – a task whose cost isn’t yet clear but is expected to run well into the billions.

Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said that the package, financed half by the federal government and half by Germany’s state governments, to help people deal with the immediate aftermath of the flooding will end up being bigger if more money is needed.

“We will do what is necessary to help everyone as quickly as possible,” he said. Authorities in the two affected states are responsible for details of who receives how much and how, but Mr. Scholz said they have indicated that there will no means-testing and it will be “a very unbureaucratic process.”

“It’s necessary to send a message quickly that there is a future, that we are taking care of it together, that this is a matter for us as the whole country to help with,” he added. Chancellor Angela Merkel said during a visit to a badly damaged town on Tuesday that she hopes getting money to people “is a question of days.”

Germany has recent experience with major floods that hit swaths of the country, particularly the east, in 2002 and 2013. They caused extensive and costly damage. However, the death tolls were particularly high in last week’s floods, which were the worst in living memory in the areas they hit.

At least 171 people were killed in Germany when small rivers swelled quickly into raging torrents after persistent downpours last week – well over half of them in Ahrweiler county, near Bonn. Another 31 died in neighboring Belgium, bringing the death toll in both countries to 202.

Mr. Scholz said that government aid for rebuilding after the 2013 floods has totaled around 6 billion euros so far and it could end up being more this time.

“There is nothing we need to delay,” he told reporters in Berlin. “The pledge we want to give now is that this help with rebuilding can begin straight away ... so that everything necessary can be done to restore infrastructure, damaged houses, damaged schools, hospitals, put in order anything that was destroyed there.”

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said he hopes for a rough assessment of the damage by the end of the month, after which federal officials and state governors will have to meet to discuss the way forward.

He and Mr. Scholz indicated that people can expect reconstruction aid whether or not they were insured for “elementary damage” such as floods, which many in Germany are not, though insurance likely will be taken into account in determining details. Ms. Merkel has expressed skepticism about making such insurance obligatory, arguing that it could produce unaffordable premiums, but some other German officials advocate it.

Mr. Seehofer said there will have to be “a broad debate about safeguard systems” for the future given that natural disasters are likely to become more frequent and more destructive.

Mr. Scholz concurred, adding: “in terms of what’s going on now, we have to help. I would argue against being cynical and being heartless – this is a big disaster, we have to help and that has to be the first priority, rather than any principles.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

Editor's note: For more on how Europeans are helping in the aftermath of the floods, see the Monitor’s recent coverage.