Status: 08/18/2021 11:31 a.m.
Around four weeks after the flood, the Federal Cabinet initiated financial reconstruction aid. 30 billion euros are to be made available to repair the damage in the affected regions.
The federal government has approved a multi-billion dollar state fund for the victims of the flood disaster. The cabinet approved a resolution agreed by Chancellor Merkel together with the prime ministers. A total of around 30 billion euros is to be paid out for the reconstruction of houses, companies, roads, bridges and railways. 16 billion of this should flow in this year.
The coalition factions of the Union and the SPD want to bring a corresponding draft into the Bundestag. According to this, construction aid for private households and companies is provided if “the damage is not covered by insurance or other third parties”.
The amount of the damage is still unclear
How high the damage actually is along the Ahr, the Erft, the Inde and many other rivers that have overflowed, no one is yet able to say. Homeowners, businesses and local politicians are still busy documenting the damage on site. Debris heaps and wrecked cars have to be cleared away, and cellular networks and water supplies have to be repaired.
The federal government alone puts the damage to its infrastructure at two billion euros – this includes sagging motorways or destroyed railway lines. The remaining 28 billion euros from the aid fund should be distributed roughly equally between North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Build-up funds from corona loans
Homeowners damaged by the flood are to be reimbursed 80 percent of the costs that would be necessary to restore their destroyed buildings – in cases of hardship, all costs should also be covered.
The development fund is initially financed from corona loans from the federal government, which had not been fully exhausted. The federal states stutter their share for 30 years by foregoing part of the sales tax revenue.