Daniel

The European Commission has approved an advance payment of 25.3 million euros to Greece "to ease the financial burden of reconstruction efforts" following Storm Daniel in September 2023.

The payment is being made under the Commission's European Solidarity Fund (EUSF).

It is very likely that the extension of Kymis Avenue in northern Athens, the extension of the Western Ring Road of Ymittos toward Elliniko, and other projects that were planned but have not yet started will be shelved by the Ministry of Infrastructure.

The Ministry of Infrastructure, and not the regions, will undertake the damage restoration projects in Thessaly and Evia, the two regions that were badly affected following the deadly Storms Daniel and Elias in September 2023.

After a disastrous year for railways, with the deadly Tempe collision and Storm Daniel floods, the Ministry of Transport, in collaboration with European institutions, is looking into the creation of a new public body, with the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) as its core.

The rail link between Athens and Thessaloniki has reopened after a three-month stoppage caused by Storm Daniel, with 131 boarding the first service from the capital on Saturday morning.

"The Greek railway is back on the tracks," said Infrastructure and Transport Minister Christos Staikouras, who was among the passengers as far as Larissa.

The railway link along the central Athens-Thessaloniki axis, previously disrupted by the damage caused during storms Daniel and Elias, was set to be restored Monday with the arrival of the first commercial train at the Thriasio Logistics Center.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday chaired a meeting with local administration officials near Lake Karla in the Thessaly region, which was impacted by Storm Daniel in September.

"In the beginning we said that the first to get money were those whose houses collapsed. That wasn't the case. Then we thought maybe it was the poorest. That wasn't the case either. Could it be they distributed the first relief payments based on party criteria, we wondered. That didn't seem to have happened. Now, we are making jokes and saying maybe only the tall ones received aid.

A visit to flood-stricken Thessaly by EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, initially scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed until October 5 as a new wave of wet weather is hitting the same region, Greece's Agricultural Development and Food Minister Lefteris Avgenakis announced.

Heavy rainfall from the Elias weather system has struck parts of northern Evia, Greece's second largest island located east of Athens, where over 50,000 hectares of forest were devastated by massive wildfires in 2021.