Europe unlocks €11 million in aid for flood victims in northern France

The European Commission has unlocked an initial €11.6 million of aid to help victims of the severe flooding that hit Nord-Pas-de-Calais in November 2023.

In January 2024, the total cost of the flooding disaster in the Hauts-de-France region was estimated at €640 million by the Caisse Centrale de Réassurance.

The new set of funding comes from the FSUE (fonds de solidarité de l'union européenne), after the French government requested additional aid to help.

European aid initially came in the form of water giga-pumps (giant pumps) from the Netherlands, to help pump away the excess water. The four pumps could take away 5,400m3 of water per hour, each.

Read also:

• Stay home warning as red flood alerts continue in north France

• Thousands of homes without water as flood alerts continue in France

• Homes evacuated as floods continue in north France, one death in west 

This time, the aid is financial.

In fact, the €11.6 million figure is only around 25% of the total expected, the Commission said in a statement. 

The final amount has yet to be determined, but will be decided based on “budgetary availability”, it added. The rest of the money is expected to be received in the next few months. Estimates have put it at around €47 million, after Prime Minister Gabriel Attal suggested as much during a visit in May.

It was his fourth visit to the stricken area since the flooding.

Since 2002, the FSUE has sent more than €8.6 billion in aid to France, to help it with the fallout of natural disasters. This includes Storm Xynthia in 2010, the Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Saint-Martin, and Storm Alex in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in 2020.