Europe Unites in Face of Floods

European leaders pledged Sunday to overcome the widespread devastation inflicted by more than a week of flooding, proclaiming the disaster a shared catastrophe and one that will show that the European Union is more than an economic abstraction.

Meeting here at the urging of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the government leaders of four countries hit by the record deluge cobbled together a so-called Solidarity Fund to pay for the billions in infrastructure washed away from the shores of some of the Continent’s major rivers.

European Commission President Romano Prodi told the emergency “flood summit” that regional development funds set aside in the EU budgets through 2006 could be tapped for the massive cleanup and reconstruction. He also outlined a package of credits and low-interest loans for farmers and homeowners hurt by the disaster.

In addition, EU regulations aimed at reducing farm subsidies and putting a ceiling on national debt will be relaxed, Prodi assured the leaders of Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Of the countries inundated since torrential rains began about 10 days ago in Russia and swept westward, only Germany and Austria are members of the 15-nation EU. The others are on track to join the union.

But Prodi joined Schroeder and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel in assuring the Eastern European states that they will have equal access to EU aid coffers.

“The damage inflicted and the suffering of the people affect all these countries whether or not they are yet members,” Schroeder told a news conference with the other summit leaders. By pulling together in this time of crisis, he added, “Europe shows that it isn’t just a common market or an abstract notion but a powerful force able to tackle even a crisis of this magnitude.”

No exact figures have been agreed to, Schroeder said, noting that the $500 million discussed with Prodi “is very preliminary” and clearly only a fraction of what will be needed.

The full cost of the disaster cannot even be hinted at yet, as flood waters continued to surge Sunday along the Danube and Elbe rivers, respectively threatening the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and the northern German cities of Magdeburg and Hamburg. In Brandenburg state, which encircles Berlin, tens of thousands of residents were preparing to evacuate the tiny Elbe riverside towns and villages expected to be the disaster’s next victims.

In Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said he remained confident that the city would escape major damage even as the swollen Danube was rising precariously close to waterfront landmarks.

The river level dropped for the second day in the devastated German city of Dresden, where the Zwinger Palace art museum and Semper Opera both suffered heavy damage. But mud covered much of the historic Old Town, and officials were unsure whether it was safe for evacuees to return. The seven bridges straddling the Elbe in Dresden were being inspected for structural damage.

The floods ravaging the Continent have killed more than 100 people, forced hundreds of thousands from their homes and inflicted double-digit billions of dollars in damage. They have also caused ecological damage not yet assessed, including a chlorine gas release north of the Czech capital, Prague, and coal-laden soil now washing into the Elbe.

Schroeder said environmental protection will be a priority in the rebuilding effort, adding that Germany remains ever more committed to the Kyoto Protocol aimed at fighting global warming--a treaty the Bush administration has abandoned.

With the Mulde River, which feeds into the Elbe, still rising Sunday around the city of Bitterfeld, home to a sprawling chemical industrial park, army helicopters were ferrying sandbags at a furious pace to the site where more than 1,000 compounds, many of them volatile and toxic, are in storage. Despite the feverish activity, officials insisted that there remained no imminent ecological hazard.

Evacuations and dike reinforcement were also underway in Torgau, the Elbe town where U.S. and Soviet troops met after defeating the Nazis in World War II, and in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther launched the Reformation in 1517.

“This is the worst disaster our generation has seen,” said Schuessel, the Austrian chancellor, echoing Schroeder’s observation that European states are showing the solidarity amid hardship that until now has been only a noble concept of social and economic integration.

Analysts have been giving reconstruction figures as high as $15 billion in Germany alone, an amount that would probably force the federal government to borrow beyond the deficit level--3% of gross domestic product--that nations using the euro common currency are required to maintain in the interest of collective solvency.

Schroeder, showing testiness after days of hectic travel and crisis management, refused to say whether the flood bills will undermine Germany’s already difficult struggle to stay within the EU budgetary parameters.

“What we needed to talk about here today was how to help people, not about abstract matters,” the chancellor snapped when asked whether the deficit limit would be ignored.