Organized by the European Commission, France and Slovenia, an International Donors’ Conference under the motto ‘Rebuilding Together’ was held 16 July in Brussels in order to raise funds for the flood-ravaged areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Croatia was represented by Assistant Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Batistić-Kos.
The conference gathered 80 representatives of states, international organizations and financial institutions, and managed to overall mobilise pledges of EUR 809.2 million for Bosnia and Herzegovina and EUR 995.2 million for Serbia. EUR 41.4 million were pledged for cross-border activities. The priorities for the coming period are flood prevention and flood risk management, regional cooperation in flood resilience and river management, development of civil protection mechanism, as well as shaping energy and environmental policy.
As it was not in the recipient category, Croatia participated in the conference as a neighbouring donor country. Batistić-Kos said that the recent wave of catastrophic floods that had struck Croatia, BiH and Serbia underlined the need for the reconstruction process to be implemented within a regional framework. She stressed that Croatia had been helping from the start, by sending rescue teams and financial assistance (EUR 382,585 to Serbia and EUR 1,390,000 to BiH).
By year’s end, Croatia will reprogram EUR 1,350,000 worth of projects in order to address the needs of population in the flood-hit areas, notably in BiH, said Batistić-Kos, adding that Croatia had launched an initiative within the European Commission to draft a new integrated mechanism through which the EU could act in the prevention of future natural disasters in countries of different status, while in cooperation with BiH and Serbian partners Croatia would run a regional project of mine detection and marking worth EUR 527,000.