Von der Leyen visiting Slovenia after devastating floods

Accompanied by European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič, von der Leyen will express solidarity and support to Slovenia after the devastating floods, the European Commission announced.

At the same time, she wants to discuss how the EU can support the flood relief efforts in the affected areas in the most effective way and how to implement preventive measures so that a similar disaster does not happen again.

Golob and von der Leyen will first have a meeting at Brdo pri Kranju before they fly over the flood-stricken areas of Komenda, Mengeš, Kamnik, Luče, Ljubno ob Savinji, Mozirje and Črna na Koroškem, stopping at Črna to get a sense of the scale of the devastation.

Speaking after yesterday's government session, Golob said he and the Commission president will fly over the most severely affected areas for von der Leyen to see "as graphically and specifically as possible" the scope of the weather catastrophe.

He would like her to have these images in mind when the EU discusses whether Slovenia is entitled to aid from EU mechanisms and whether rules on reallocation of recovery and resilience fund could be relaxed.

The government is already preparing to submit an application for grants from the EU Solidarity Fund and appointed on Tuesday a task force to coordinate the preparation of the application, led by the Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development.

The fund is mainly intended for reconstruction after disastrous events, while the country will also be able to receive funds from the Cohesion Fund and from Next Generation EU, a fund for post-Covid recovery.

The European Commission president and the Slovenian prime minister will give a statement to the press at 11:50am in Ljubljana, after which von der Leyen will meet President Nataša Pirc Musar and National Assembly President Urška Klakočar Zupančič before she concludes the visit by addressing the National Assembly, which is meeting to pass some disaster relief legislation.