The European Court of Auditors has said that flood protection should now be improved, before climate change take its toll on rainfall and sea levels.

In a new report, the court says that work is still needed to improve flood risk management throughout Europe, and criticises how funds are allocated for flood protection.

After inspecting flood defence plans in nine EU member states, the court found that: “Major future challenges remain concerning the much fuller integration of climate change, flood insurance and spatial planning in flood risk management.”

This is according to Phil Wynn Owen, the court member responsible for the report, who added: “Floods can cause injury, loss of life, considerable economic costs, damage to the environment and cultural heritage.”

The purpose of the report was to re-examine the EU Directive of 2007 – which dealt with flood protection – and while that directive “had positive effects overall”, explained Owen, “implementation plans suffered from weaknesses in allocating funding”.

Among these financing problems, the court found that the member states had only partially identified and secured sources of funding, that co-operation between those states was limited, and financing was usually not spent in line with priorities.

In fact, in one river basin area, where floods are more common than elsewhere, there was a shortfall of €1.1 billion between planned spending and the amount of money available, according to the court.

The countries involved in the court’s inspection were Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

The court also criticised what it claimed was a lack of emphasis on “green solutions” – two thirds of the member states involved in the report did not factor such solutions into their planning.

According to the court, the methodology used by the member states was also flawed, and did not take proper account of the effect of climate change on the intensity and frequency of floods.