Following the devastating floods that hit many parts of Yorkshire in June, many people are asking me what the EU is doing to help.

When floods hit Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic in the summer of 2002, the EU stepped in to offer assistance to those countries to help them recover from the crisis. That precedent led to European countries agreeing to set up a European Solidarity Fund, which the EU uses to help countries struck by similar natural disasters, as it did in 2005 for Romania and Bulgaria.

This fund IS available to the UK, and the government have announced they will apply for EU assistance. This means that flood-hit communities in Yorkshire could take a share of up to £125 million in EU aid to help them recover from the floods.