Commission pledges more aid for Pakistan

Additional €80 million for flood relief.

The European Commission has pledged an additional €80 million for flood relief in Pakistan, bringing the Commission’s total assistance to the flood-stricken country to €150m.

Kristalina Georgieva, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid, announced the additional funds in Brussels today (1 October). She said that the European Union and the member states have now pledged around €400m for Pakistan, and that 18 member states were providing assistance on the ground.

Georgieva said that more than 12 million people were still in need of assistance. “A large number of those we have not been able to reach,” Georgieva said. “More financial resources will translate into more lives saved,” she said.

She said that the humanitarian organisations that provide aid on the ground with EU funding are ready to absorb the additional funds.

According to the latest figures from the United Nations, 10 million people are still in need of immediate food aid, and 1.9m homes have been destroyed or damaged by the floods. Close to 10,000 schools have been damaged, and close to 3,000 schools are occupied by around 660,000 people made homeless in the disaster.

Georgieva stressed that Pakistan’s recovery was a long-term project. “We have a huge task ahead of us,” she said. On 14 October, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is to host a meeting in Brussels of the ‘Friends of Pakistan’ group of concerned governments to co-ordinate the longer-term response.

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Georgieva also announced that the Commission intends next year to launch a pilot project for a European volunteer corps that might assist in such emergencies in the future. A consultation process is currently under way.

The Commission is preparing plans for trade preferences that would help Pakistan’s recovery, to be adopted by EU member states later this month.