BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that people living in areas hit by floods last month could count on fast, unbureaucratic emergency aid worth more than 400 million euros and that overall reconstruction would probably cost more than 6 billion euros ($7.12 billion).
“We spent almost 400 million euros in emergency aid after the last major flood disaster. We already know that we have to spend much more this time – and we are ready to do so,” Scholz said during a visit to the western town of Schleiden-Gemuend which was hit hard by floods last month.
Scholz added that the federal government and the regional state governments had agreed to share the fiscal burden.
“After the last major flood disaster, we’ve spent 6 billion euros on reconstruction to the present day, the federal and state governments together. And the destruction that I have now seen here … if you have all of this in view, then you can already safely say that we will probably need a much larger amount to get the reconstruction done.”
($1 = 0.8430 euros)
(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, editing by Emma Thomasson)
