During a visit to France's Pas-de-Calais region, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a 50-million-euro 'support fund"' for towns and villages in the country's flood-hit north.

Communities in the Pas-de-Calais and Nord departments have suffered days of heavy rain, rivers breaking their banks and floods, and the water may rise further in the coming days before some residents have even returned to their homes.

He said: "We have taken the immediate decision to set up a support fund of 50 million euros for local authorities, which, exceptionally, will enable them to meet their initial expenses. Obviously, we'll have to put a figure on everything afterwards and improve things. It's an emergency fund that comes on top of these measures, and it too will be open-ended. The 3rd thing is for our farmers, as has been said, and the Minister will go into more detail later, obviously to reactivate the system we created a few months ago, the "calamité agricole" (agricultural disaster ed.), which will provide support and compensation. But in order to do this, not only with flexibility, but also to deal with rather exceptional circumstances, we are going to set up, on the basis of the Minister's proposals, an exceptional support fund, which will also apply to the floods, but also to the various storms we've had, and which will apply to your department, or rather to the region, the Normandy region, the Brittany region, because it's clear that we have a particular problem."