EU Directives have hampered dredging and traditional water management
For generations, British farmers and landowners as well as waterways authorities, have dredged rivers, culverts, streams and ponds, as part of the regular maintenance of the countryside.
Then in 2000, a raft of EU Directives started appearing — particularly the Water Framework Directive and its sub-directives, as well as the Waste Framework and Habitat Directives — which began to interfere in the normal dredging traditions. There are so many EU Directives which now affect water management and dredging that I will not list them all.
Suffice it to say that whilst the EU has not yet banned dredging completely, it has made it much more difficult and much more expensive.
Flooding for the non-metropolitan, non-Brussels, non-elites
Across the UK for many years now, issues like flooding have assumed rather more important for rural and semi-rural people than for most metropolitan bubble-dwellers.
More effective dredging is not the answer to preventing all flooding problems, however its very telling that after 2014 flooding of Somerset and the rich area next to the Thames river where celebrities live has not flooded since it was dredged even with all the storms we have seen this year. but the EU’s interference in this area has hardly helped. In 10 months’ time, the UK will no longer be subject to these EU Directives and it is to be hoped that the Environment Agency is already working on their replacement by a simpler and more reasonable system of supervision.
Issues like these are always more complex than they first appear, and naturally, Remoaners will continue to pretend that the EU is not at fault in any way. On topics like this, they deflect by saying “The EU does not prevent dredging, so this is fake news.”
It is true that the EU’s Directives do not prevent the dredging of rivers, streams and ponds completely. No-one is saying that. What I am saying is that this is an example of an area which has been grossly over-regulated by the EU. It is now hugely bureaucratic, restricted, time-consuming, and expensive.
It has caused great problems for farmers and land managers and the banishment of these EU Directives at the end of the year will be welcomed in many parts of the United Kingdom.
Then all we have to do is tackle the bureaucratic Environment Agency, but let’s win one battle at a time….
Which brings me to another good point.
EU has given nothing to UK flood victims since 2016 from its Disaster Fund
17 EU payouts in the last 3 years for other countries, part-paid for by UK taxpayers
The EU has a natural disasters fund for EU member countries experiencing extreme events, mainly floods. Payouts have totalled €5.2 billion. Since 2016 the UK has received nothing.
The European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) was created after the floods in Central Europe in the summer of 2002. So far 24 different European countries have been supported.
The “European Union Solidarity Fund”
Since 2002 the EU has agreed to pay out for floods and severe weather-related events 77 times
In 17 years, only two of these 77 payouts went to the UK
In the last 10 years, the UK has received just 1.5% of the money paid out
That’s the same percentage as Serbia has received, and Serbia isn’t even an EU member state
Meanwhile, for the last 18 years, the UK taxpayer has been funding 12.5% of this
For the UK from 2016, NO payouts have been approved by the EU for UK floods
In the same period, the EU agreed 17 payouts totalling €1.7 billion to other EU countries
This fund is called the “EU Solidarity Fund”
The UK was a member of the EU until 01 Feb this year, 2020
British people in flooded areas may feel entitled to ask the EU:
“Where has your solidarity been?”
(Data were taken from official EU Commission records, last updated end-Nov 2019.)
[ Sources: EU Commission | EU Parliament | Environment Agency | European Dredging Association (EuDA)
