Article 3
F1 F21.
The assistance shall take the form of a financial contribution from the Fund. For each eligible disaster or emergency, a single financial contribution shall be awarded to an eligible State.
2.
The aim of the Fund is to complement the efforts of the States concerned and to cover part of their public expenditure in order to help the eligible State to carry out, depending on the type of eligible disaster or emergency, the following essential emergency and recovery operations:
(a)
restoring the working order of infrastructure and plant in the fields of energy, water and waste water, telecommunications, transport, health and education;
(b)
providing temporary accommodation and funding rescue services to meet the needs of the population concerned;
(c)
securing preventive infrastructure and measures of protection of cultural heritage;
(d)
cleaning up disaster-stricken areas, including natural zones, in line with, where appropriate, eco-system based approaches, as well as immediate restoration of affected natural zones to avoid immediate effects from soil erosion;
(e)
measures aiming at rapidly providing assistance, including medical, to the population affected by a major public health emergency and to protect the population from the risk of being affected, including prevention, monitoring or control of the spread of diseases, combating severe risks to public health or mitigating their impact on public health.
For the purposes of point (a) of the first subparagraph, ‘ restoring the working order ’ means restoring infrastructure and plant to their condition prior to the occurrence of the natural disaster. Where it is not legally possible or economically justified to restore the condition prior to the occurrence of the natural disaster, or where the beneficiary State decides to relocate or improve the functionality of the infrastructure or plant affected in order to improve its capacity to withstand future natural disasters, the Fund may contribute to the cost of restoration only up to the estimated cost of returning to its status quo ante.
Costs in excess of the level of cost referred to in the second subparagraph shall be financed by the beneficiary State from its own or, where possible, from other Union funds.
For the purposes of point (b) of the first subparagraph, ‘ temporary accommodation ’ means accommodation that lasts until the population concerned is able to return to their original homes following their repair or reconstruction.
3.
Payments from the Fund are limited to financing measures alleviating non-insurable damage and shall be recovered if the cost of repairing the damage is subsequently met by a third party in accordance with Article 8(4).
F34.
Value added tax (VAT) shall not constitute eligible expenditure of an operation, unless it is non-recoverable under national VAT legislation.
5.
Technical assistance for management, monitoring, information and communication, complaint resolution, and control and auditing, shall not be eligible for a financial contribution from the Fund.
Costs relating to the preparation and implementation of the operations referred to in paragraph 2, including costs relating to essential technical expertise, shall be eligible as part of project costs.
6.
Where revenue is generated from the operations referred to in paragraph 2 with a financial contribution from the Fund, the total financial contribution from the Fund shall not exceed the total net costs of emergency and recovery operations borne by the beneficiary State. The beneficiary State shall include a statement to that effect in the report on the implementation of the financial contribution from the Fund pursuant to Article 8(3).
7.
On 1 October each year, at least one-quarter of the annual amount of the Fund should remain available in order to cover needs arising until the end of the year.