Wildfires: EU doubles rescEU firefighting fleet for summer 2023

On May 30, 2023, the doubling of the rescEU aerial firefighting fleet for this year's wildfire season at the 10^th anniversary of the EU's Emergency Response Coordination Centre was announced.

The rescEU firefighting aircraft reserve includes 24 airplanes and 4 helicopters from 10 Member States. In addition, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will be sending almost 450 firefighters to be prepositioned in France, Greece and Portugal.

In 2022 the Commission developed also a Wildfire Prevention Action Plan. This action plan will improve administrative capacity; improve knowledge; increase investments in wildfire prevention action. As part of the prevention action plan, a new “Wildfire Peer Review Assessment Methodology” was launched. This new tool helps countries assess their capacity to prevent and prepare for wildfires.

In addition, an Emergency Response Coordination Centre Wildfires Support Team is being created to enable near-real-time monitoring and analysis of the wildfire situation from mid-June to mid-September.

For more information:

The Council of the EU press release:

Wildfires: EU doubles rescEU firefighting fleet summer 2023 (europa.eu)