The climate crisis is no longer a distant scenario, but a daily threat that tests the resilience of infrastructure, the economy and social cohesion. So the need to modernize the national strategy against natural disasters was at the center of the second NatCat Summit conference in Athens, organized by Money Review, Kathimerini’s financial website.
President of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, Petra Hielkema, supervisor of the European insurance industry, emphasized the European trend to strengthen insurance protection, underlining that coordination of all parties involved is essential to support economic stability in cases of extreme events.
The conference highlighted that dealing with major natural disasters requires a radical revision of the national strategy. The main conclusion was the common assumption that neither the state nor the private sector can now bear the financial burden of recovery alone, making close cooperation imperative. Hielkema set the tone for the event by highlighting the widening protection gap in Europe.
For Greece, the data she presented is sobering, as insurance coverage for natural disaster risks has remained below 5% since 1980, attributed to risk underestimation by citizens, as well as to the false expectation that the state will always cover all damage.
