An important meeting was held Tuesday between the elected representatives of the COM, the prefect Anne Laubies and a delegation from Europe who came within the framework of the reconstruction of Saint-Martin.
This meeting at the Hôtel de la Collectivité was followed by a field visit to sites affected by Hurricane Irma. This was for the delegation to come and see for themselves the damage; the working meeting allowed us to discuss the levers to be quickly activated for the release of European funds.
In the preamble, the president of the Community, Daniel Gibbs addressed the members of the European delegation:
“Two months after IRMA, our territory is just beginning to catch its breath after having lived through terrible hours and days - our island is slowly rising. Slowly…
I am proud of the resilience of our people who have worked hard. We are also proud of the action of our community which, the day after the hurricane, deployed significant resources to restore the territory to its original state. We notably spent 8,5 million euros on the clearing and cleaning of our island.
Of course, I want to mention here the precious support of the Armed forces (RSMA and civil engineering), and of Non-Governmental Organizations, which worked alongside us.
The clearing will take several more months, and in reality the time for reconstruction is not yet effective.
To begin this crucial phase for our economy, we need national and European solidarity more than ever.
A damage assessment file produced by the community services was sent to the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. It reports 90% of damaged public and private buildings and 2/3 of dwellings that have become uninhabitable.
The amount of repairs was estimated at 3,5 billion € / with a refinement to 2.5 billion for actions to be initiated as a priority, 700 M € for emergencies.
What must be understood is that our economy has stopped dead, with all that that has complex repercussions on the lives of our citizens.
In this highly degraded context, the Collectivity of Saint-Martin intends to work in transparency and fully assume its responsibilities.
As I had the opportunity to recall during my two interventions in Guyana last week on the occasion of the XXII conference of presidents of RUP, I followed the recommendations of the President of the Republic. He himself said during his visit that he was going to "shake up the procedures" to help Saint Martin rebuild "quickly and better". Well I listened to it, and I disrupted the procedures locally.
A few days after the passage of IRMA, we took strong tax measures to give our citizens a breath of fresh air (reduction of the property tax for the 2017 financial year).
In mid-October, I announced the creation of a Phoenix Plan for economic recovery. This plan includes that I will present Thursday to the Territorial Council includes four main areas of work:
- Reconstruction,
- The revival of our economy,
- Youth training
- Support for the most vulnerable.
It will be our roadmap for reconstruction and takes its essence at the very heart of the social project that I imagined with my team for Saint-Martin and for which we were elected last March.
For example, I decided to devote part of the available ERDF funds to supporting our businesses.
You understand ... the support of the European Union and the French State depends directly on the success of our reconstruction and economic recovery plan.
In this respect, I would like to salute the listening and the confidence granted by the European Commission. Commissioner Corina CRETU has already announced the allocation of additional funds to Saint-Martin.
We now hope that the specific requests we have made in Paris, Brussels and recently in Guyana will be quickly acted upon, in particular concerning the request for aid under the EUSF.
I am thinking in particular of the drafting of two separate requests:
- One corresponding to the damage caused by cyclone IRMA (and which is of particular interest to us today),
- The other corresponding to the damage of cyclone MARIA (and which concerns Saint-Martin but also the neighboring islands).
I thank DEGEOM for clarifying this precise point because we need a firm response. Saint Martin cannot wait any longer.
For my part, I will be particularly attentive to the intervention of the members of the delegation, regarding the modalities of revision of our Operational Programs.
I remind you that the objective for US Saint-Martinois, is to quickly obtain the creation of these new axes "reconstruction" within our OP. We do need to move quickly to be able to mobilize funds in the coming weeks.
In addition, we also wish to take into account the simultaneous movement of appropriations between the axes within the OPs, and in particular within the OP Guadeloupe State. We require this simultaneity to be able to add to the priority ESF axes dedicated to Saint-Martin and especially the new reconstruction axis.
With regard to the INTERREG Caribbean cooperation program of which Saint Martin is one of the partners, the idea is also to create a Priority Axis for Reconstruction Saint Martin on the INTERREG Caribbean Program - Transnational Component.
Through its president Ary Chalus, the Guadeloupe Region - managing authority of the INTERREG Caribbean Program - has already committed to mobilizing specific funds for the reconstruction axis of Saint-Martin, on this Caribbean program. Here too, we need to go fast in order to act quickly.
We are also studying the possibility of transferring the 10M € available on the Saint-Martin / Sint-Maarten Cross-border Cooperation Program within this new priority axis Reconstruction. This operation would allow us to cooperate with our entire cross-border area, from Sint-Maarten to Anguilla, via St-Barthélemy and St-Kitts-Nevis.
This Saint-Martin Reconstruction Axis will also benefit from 95% co-financing, compared to a maximum of 85% today for similar projects ”.
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