12. Integration of Risk and Resilience into Policy

France still remembers well the major flood which happened in 1910 and the dramatic damages it created at that time. Today with 17 million people and nine million jobs potentially impacted by the key rivers floods, France is very exposed to flooding hazards and particularly the Paris and the Ile de France Basin. Several EU Member States share similar significant flood risk and experienced, indeed, in UK,Germany and Central Europe very large floodings creating several Billion Euro of damages and a significant number of casualties. The recognition of this important flood risk across many EU Member countries led to the establishment of the October 2007, European Directive which provided a general framework for public management of floods. And Member States were required to incorporate this Directive into national law by 2010.To benefit from its International competences a Review of Risk Management Policies was conducted by the OECD Directoriate for Public Governance and Territorial Development.This review was supported by the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and EU and led to a very comprehensive report published in 2014 providing a set of important recommendations on: governance of flood risk, on increasing resilience and on financing prevention. Based on the 2010 French law and helped by the recommendations of the OECD report the French government launched a National Flood Risk Management Strategy associating all flood management parties through the Joint Flood Commission (CMI). After a national public consultation the project of national strategy has been adopted on the 7th October 2014 by the Ministers of Environment, Interior, Agriculture and Housing. This document is the basis of the French Flood Management Policy at national, district, basin and local levels and actions plans have been devolopped accordingly over the whole country..To test the effectiveness of the Policies and actions put in place the Secretary General of the Paris Defense and Safety Zone (SGZDS) covering the whole Ile-de-France area organized an exercise simulating major Seine flooding in Ile-de-France basin.This exercise called EU SEQUANA lasted two whole weeks in 2016, March 7th–March 18th. More than 90 national and EU partners were involved in this project, most of them from vital importance sectors such as energy,water, transport, telecommunications….

Important recommandations to achieve better resilience of the flood risk management have been identified and will surely be integrated into future policies and processes.As an unexpected significant flood of the Seine River happened in May/June 2016, just after the EU SEQUANA exercise,some of the recommendations already implemented could be confirmed.