Ladies and gentlemen,

A few weeks ago, unusually dramatic floods struck the populations of Poland, Czech Republic and Germany riverside residents of the Oder, generating a true economic and human tragedy. Over 80 people met their death in this event.

Europeans still have in mind the tremendous flashfloods at Vaison-la-Romaine in 1992, which caused the death of 42 people, the severe floods in River Po basin in 1994, and the devastating inundations of the Rhein and Meuse in both 1993 and 1994.

Such events as well as, farther from us but still more dramatically, the earthquake which occurred in Kobe, Japan, in 1995, remind us how fragile and vulnerable our sophisticated societies remain while confronting the natural risks, all the more fragile, sometimes, as they are sophisticated.

Fortunately, science and technology give us the means to better understand the mechanisms, prevent the effects and mitigate the consequences of natural catastrophes. Due, notably, to the scale on which such events occur, the complexity of their mechanisms and the spreading of scientific expertise and research facilities across the countries, we have a strong advantage to conduct the indispensable research efforts in European collaboration.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1994 Northern and Southern Europe floods, I took therefore the initiate to ask for the setting-up of a special research action on this topic in the framework of the European Union research programmes. The result of this is the RIBAMOD concerted action implemented thanks to your collaboration.

You are meeting today for the third time, and I am very pleased to notice that results are already available. I would therefore like to warmly thank and congratulate the European scientific community for the rapidity and the efficiency with which it reacted to the Commission's initiative.

The efforts undertaken through this action are aimed to a further strengthening. I am pleased to confirm that several million Ecus have been allocated for research in hydrological risks under the Environment and Climate programme of the current Fourth Research Framework Programme. Moreover, natural and technological risk constitutes one of the topics the Commission proposes to select for action at European scale in the forthcoming Fifth Framework Programme.

This new Framework will represent a turning point in the history of European Union research. Explicitly conceived at the service of the European citizens, it is characterised by an orientation of the research activities towards the big social and economic issues Europe is facing, in support of the Union's policy objectives: improvement of European industrial competitiveness and the employment situation, but also improvement of the quality of life of the European citizens in its different dimensions, notably health, environment and security.

Research in support of the fight against natural and technological risks constitutes an important component of this effort, and activities are foreseen in the field of research on floods, earthquakes, forest fires, volcanic risks, nuclear and industrial safety, to mention some examples.

I do not have any doubts that the scientific community convening here today will make an important contribution to the implementation of these efforts, to translate the progress of knowledge into the kind of concrete achievements and improvements of their quality of life that European citizens are strongly expecting from research in general, and from European research in particular.

I thank you therefore in advance and wish you fruitful exchanges at the occasion of this workshop.

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