Poland to mobilise up to $6 billion for flood relief, says PM

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will mobilise up to 23 billion zlotys ($6.01 billion), some of it from the European Union, to deal with the aftermath of severe flooding, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.

The worst floods in at least two decades left many towns in southwestern Poland submerged, and the government had said it would free up funds from the budget and use European Union cash in the recovery effort.

"The scale of this aid in terms of flood relief and the plan we are preparing for reconstruction plus, at the moment, European funds - we estimate we will be able to mobilise up to 23 billion," Tusk told a government meeting.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier that 10 billion euros ($11.14 billion) would be made available from EU cohesion funds to tackle recent flooding in parts of the 27-nation bloc. She said some of the conditions usually attached to such funds, such as co-financing by member states, would be lifted to speed up the response.

Around 5 billion euros from this have been earmarked for Poland.

She also said that money from the EU's Solidarity Fund, which supports member states hit by natural disasters, would be used to rebuild infrastructure.

Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski has said 2 billion zlotys will be set aside in the budget for flood relief.

The minister for funds and regional development, Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz, has said 1.5 billion zlotys from Poland's existing EU funds would be redirected to reconstruction, with another 3.5 billion potentially allocated to building floodwalls, reservoirs and dams.

($1 = 3.8279 zlotys)

($1 = 0.8978 euros)

(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz; editing by Mark Heinrich)