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The EU has co-ordinated more responses to wildfires this year than ever before, highlighting the impact of climate change on the world’s fastest warming continent.
Set up in 2001, the bloc’s so-called Civil Protection Mechanism pools resources such as planes and firefighters dispatched from other member states when a government requests assistance in case of a natural disaster. The EU budget covers 75 per cent of the operational costs.
In the first eight months of this year, the CPM had been activated 29 times in response to extreme weather ranging from wildfires to landslides, compared with 23 in the whole of 2023, according to European Commission data shared with the Financial Times.
This is the most that the mechanism has been called upon for weather-related disasters since it was established and is well over double the number of cases compared with 2020.
The most pressing emergency is in Greece, where a 25 metre-high wall of fire reached the outskirts of Athens this week, killing a woman and injuring dozens before firefighters succeeded in getting it under control. Blazes are still raging through thousands of acres of Greek land.
Last year, the EU experienced one of its worst wildfire seasons yet with Europe’s largest fire, which burnt more than 96,000 hectares in Greece last August.
The European Environment Agency said in March this year that without “decisive action”, climate risks in Europe could reach “critical or catastrophic levels by the end of this century. Hundreds of thousands of people would die from heatwaves, and economic losses from coastal floods alone could exceed €1tn per year”.
According to Copernicus, the European weather monitoring service, this July was the second-hottest month on record with average temperatures dragged up by the extreme heat in southern and eastern Europe.
Temperatures in Greece were recorded above 40C for 14 consecutive days last month.
A study published by the journal Nature Medicine this week found that 47,700 people died of extreme heat in Europe in 2023, the highest number on record after 2022.
Climate change has made wildfires in Greece twice as likely, according to the annual State of Wildfires report led by UK universities and the Met Office and published on Wednesday. Carbon emissions from wildfires globally were 16 per cent above average, it said.
Brussels said that 556 firefighters from 12 EU member states would be positioned in Greece and other southern European countries this year — while 24 firefighting planes and 2 helicopters would be ready for deployment.
Still, Athens has called for additional assistance, with the commission saying that two Italian planes, a French helicopter and firefighters from the Czech Republic and Romania were dispatched to tackle the fire this week.
Since 2020, wildfires have been the main type of crisis governments have activated the EU mechanism for. Last year, wildfire-related requests made up about half of applications, while this year so far it is approaching two-thirds.
EU members and candidate countries including Ukraine and North Macedonia, which is also affected by the fires raging in Greece, can also request support under the mechanism. It has an allocated funding of €3.3bn for 2020-2027, with capitals, particularly in southern Europe, calling for a significant top-up.
The fires still blazing across Greece’s Attica province have reportedly destroyed 85,000 acres of land since Sunday.
More than 200 buildings have been reduced to rubble including schools, gyms and a sports hall, a local government official in Athens told the Financial Times. Archeological sites and the National Observatory of Athens have been spared as winds changed direction, the official said.
But local businesses have sustained thousands of euros of damage, according to local media.
Residents on Wednesday could start applying for compensation from the Greek state for their destroyed property. Homeowners can claim either €5,000 or €10,000 depending on the level of damage.
The wildfires have largely abated from Monday’s peak, with scattered outbreaks under control.
“When extreme conditions prevail, the problem becomes insurmountable,” said the Greek climate crisis minister, Vassilis Kikilias.
High winds, a prolonged drought and difficult terrain made things worse, he said, while praising the “superhuman” efforts of the 702 firefighters involved.
Cartography by Jana Tauschinski
