Opportunity for the future: A European industrial disaster risk-sharing facility
Even though legislative institutions and competent authorities do their best to ensure a high level of security within and around establishments with high risk profiles, all these efforts still proved insufficient to prevent industrial disasters of extraordinary magnitude from happening in Japan (Fukushima, 2011), Hungary (red sludge catastrophe of Kolontár, 2010) and France (AZF disaster, 2001) among others, writes János Áder for New Europe.
The Hungarian government calls on an EU-wide risk-sharing community of industrial actors, designed to meet the needs of future challenges related to major industrial disasters. As the magnitude of damages caused by major industrial accidents exposes the limits of the "polluter pays principle," of the private insurance sector and of budgetary flexibility under the conditions of the sovereign debt crisis currently sweeping across the EU.