EU oks 41 mln euro special aid package for flood recovery in Bosnia

In addition to flood prevention and river management, the 2014 special measures for Bosnia and Herzegovina also include further EU assistance to housing rehabilitation, to small and medium sized enterprises and local economic development in flood affected areas, support to enhance civil protection capacities in disaster response and grant support to local non-governmental organizations, the Commission said in a statement.

This is the second part of the package of 85 million euro pledged by the EU at the donors conference in July 2014.

As part of the 2014 special measures package, the EU also adopted 20 million euro from the IPA multi-country envelope to support regional river infrastructure projects in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

This assistance will focus on the re-construction of embankments of different sections of the Sava and Drina rivers located both in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and having a cross-border and regional impact.

Implementation of the new funds is envisaged to start in 2015.

Extraordinary rainfall affected Bosnia in May, triggering floods that had a total economic impact of around 3.98 billion marka ($2.5 billion/2.0 billion euro).

(1 euro=1.95583 Bosnian marka)