The criteria for recognizing the state of natural disaster will be "
softened
" in the case of drought to "
better take into account the slow and progressive nature of the phenomenon of drought-rehydration of the soil
" which causes damage to houses, according to Wednesday's Council of Ministers report.
The phenomenon of shrinkage-swelling of clay soils (RGA) affects a good half of the metropolitan territory and causes landslides that destabilize the foundations of houses and generate cracks in the walls.
This government ordinance, taken within the framework of a law of February 2022, "
as well as the implementing texts which will accompany it by the summer, will make it possible to increase the number of municipalities eligible for the recognition of the state of natural disaster compared to the current situation
", underlines the government.
Relaxation of criteria
Several months ago, the program Cash Investigation had pointed out the difficulty of obtaining compensation in certain cases with situations sometimes bordering on the absurd.
In addition to a relaxation of the recognition criteria, "
a new mechanism
" will allow the compensation of victims located in municipalities "
having suffered an abnormal succession of droughts of significant magnitude, but whose intensity measured year by year does not meet the criteria current
”.
The executive also wants "
better consideration of the situation of adjacent municipalities
" to those that have had the recognition of the state of natural disaster, the current system means that a dwelling located in a municipality can be compensated while a house a few hundred meters away is not.
To avoid a cost slippage for CCR, the public reinsurer responsible for compensating natural disasters and which expressed concern in a recent study about these developments, compensation "
will be concentrated on claims likely to affect the solidity or 'hinder the normal use of the damaged building
'.
Read alsoIn Argentina, agriculture victim of a severe drought
In other words, the government is responding favorably to a track mentioned several times by the federation of insurers which questioned the need to compensate for "
purely aesthetic
" damage.
In 2022, the cost of damage to individual homes due to drought is expected to be around 2.5 billion euros, a record since the creation of the "Natural disasters" scheme
in
1982.
SEE ALSO
- Drought: should we fear a water shortage?