BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - The SPD in the Bundestag is pushing for legal regulations to provide more insurance cover for residential buildings against natural disasters. To this end, the SPD parliamentary group adopted a position paper "Insuring natural hazards at favorable terms" in Berlin on Tuesday. The aim is to link residential building and natural hazard insurance, as SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich explained. Insurance companies should be obliged to always offer natural hazard insurance with homeowners' insurance. "Due to the high costs, not even every second property in Germany is insured against natural hazards," the paper states.

SPD legal politician Johannes Fechner referred to neighboring France, where such a model is already in practice. According to Fechner, the level of premiums and scope of benefits for natural hazard insurance should be prescribed by law. "All efforts to increase the insurance density in Germany have failed despite many flood disasters, which is why the legislator must take action." The fact that 99 percent of all properties in Germany have homeowners' insurance should be taken advantage of.

"Climate damage can affect anyone and therefore an obligation for insurers to offer insurance is justified," says Fechner. "There must be an end to the situation where citizens are compensated for disasters that occur before elections, but victims of flood disasters go away empty-handed without the political pressure of an upcoming election." Fechner appealed to the coalition partner FDP to move on the issue.

"There was massive damage to buildings in the Ahr valley and on the Baltic Sea," the SPD paper states. "Such severe and extreme weather events will unfortunately occur more frequently, longer and more intensively in times of climate change."/bw/DP/stw