After the severe floods in the spring of 2014, a regional conference was organised to strengthen flood prevention and flood risk management in the Western Balkans. Based on a common understanding of investment needs required to prevent and deal with floods and implement the EU’s Floods Directive, the European Commission commissioned an analysis on the status of flood management in general, and specifically on the status of implementation of the Floods Directive in the Western Balkans.
The analysis was performed in the first half of 2015 with a purpose to i) provide a list of flood risk management tools (flood hazard and risk maps, hydraulic models, early warning systems, etc.) and flood prevention structures within the region; ii) assess the requirements for sound flood risk management including but not limited to, the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive; iii) implement a gap analysis to determine what investment is required at municipal, national and regional level; iv) identify “no-regret” investments and high priority measures, which address hot spot areas, communities and infrastructure that are particularly vulnerable; v) convert these investments and measures into feasible, multi-annual investments with a prioritisation schedule tailored to suit each beneficiary and associated with likely means of financing (including national and international resources, as well as private sector resources); and vi) prepare an investment and capacity/governance building plan, which takes into account available financing and includes a "prioritisation" ranking, specific to the EU’s Water Framework Directive and Floods Directive.
The general objective of the analysis was to enhance the capacity of the Western Balkans in flood risk management and flood prevention and to ensure compliance with relevant European Union legislation, in particular, the Floods Directive.
