Govt announces emergency infrastructure projects to restore transports, access in Thessaly

The Greek government on Wednesday announced several major infrastructure projects in the flood-ravaged Thessaly plain, totaling 500-600 million euros, primarily restoration of destroyed roadways, rail lines and bridges.

The works, of an emergency nature, will be included in a revised National Recovery and Resilience Facility Plan (Greece 2.0), with the aim of restoring access and transportation to flood-stricken areas, the relevant Infrastructure and Transport Minister, Christos Staikouras, told participants at Wednesday’s Economist conference on the sidelines of the annual Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) in the northern Greece city.

In a related development on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cited Greece and Spain as suffering from devastating wildfires and flooding over the past few months, in delivering her annual state of the Union address.

“This is the reality of a boiling planet,” she said, adding that “we saw the chaos and carnage of extreme weather – from Slovenia to Bulgaria and right across our Union.”

Another EU official, Han Das, the Commission’s director of emergency management, on Wednesday, from Thessaloniki, said heatwaves, wildfires and flooding hit several European countries almost simultaneously.

Das said the total amount of burnt land in Europe is 40 percent higher than the average over the last few years, and particularly citing the massive wildfire in Evros prefecture of northeast Greece. He said the latter destroyed 96,000 hectares, an area equivalent to a third of Luxembourg.

Das made the comments at an Economist conference entitled “Managing Natural Disasters: Protecting Life – Building Resilience”.