Experts blame Greek government's lack of preparation for scale of flood disaster

Assessing the damage that Storm Daniel caused in Central Greece last week, experts blame the regional authorities for not having sufficiently utilized EU funds designated for anti-flood works.

As reported by Euractiv, the government only used a fragment of the €187.63 million from the EU Recovery Fund for climate change protection projects, which would have included work to prevent flooding in the Thessaly region, where 15 people have now died as a result of the storm.

The regional authorities had announced in the past their plans of cleaning up rivers and carrying out anti-flood works, yet are now heavily criticized as these changes did little to prevent the scale of the natural disaster.

The Governor of Thessaly, Konstantinos Agorastos, presented a €210 million flood protection plan in 2021 following widespread destruction in the region from Cyclone Ianos, yet many of these initiatives had been delayed due to bureaucracy.

Experts estimate that the damage from the current floods stands at €2.5 billion, which led to Athens requesting financial aid from the EU.

According to the publication, experts believe that the already-existing anti-flood infrastructure will need to be adapted, and frequent checks should be introduced to ensure they continue to work as intended.