EU member states spend 0.5% of their money on fire protection services

The European summer season season is more and more the theatre of apocalyptic scenes as heatwave-fuelled fires scorch hundreds of acres of land.

But authorities expenditure on fire-protection providers has largely remained on par with the place it was on the flip of the century. 

The 27 member states of the European Union spent a mixed €30.9 billion on fire-protection providers in 2019, in line with the bloc’s official statistics company, Eurostat. More moderen knowledge isn’t but out there. 

This amounted to about 0.5% of complete authorities expenditure on the EU degree, a determine that has remained steady since 2001, Eurostat added.

But, not all states spend the identical. Bulgaria spends about 0.9% of its complete expenditures on fire-protection providers, whereas Denmark simply 0.1%.

Of the Mediterranean member states, that are historically essentially the most impacted by wildfires, France meets the  EU common (0.5%), Greece is barely above (0.6%), whereas Spain, Italy and Portugal are slightly below (0.4%).

Fires more and more shifting north-wards

Management efforts in so-called EUMED 5 — France, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain — have been efficient, because the burnt space has barely decreased since 1980, in line with the European Atmosphere Company (EEA).

However there may be “giant interannual variability” based mostly on meteorological circumstances, the EEA famous, underlining that the burnt space in 2017 throughout the EUMED5 was the second largest on file, due particularly to unprecedented fires in Portugal, whereas the burnt space in 2018 was the bottom on file.

The yr 2018 was additionally noteworthy as a result of extra international locations suffered giant forest fires than ever recorded earlier than, together with in central and northern Europe, which have been normally spared from fires. Sweden, for example, skilled its worst hearth season ever that yr and requested worldwide fire-fighting help.

In actual fact, forest fires accounted for 17% of the requests for help by means of the EU Civil Safety Mechanism between 2007 and 2021.

In response to European Fee figures, the mechanism —which permits member states or third international locations to request help if their very own capacities are overwhelmed by a catastrophe — was activated a mean of 6.5 occasions yearly between 2007 and 2019 solely to fight forest fires. 

The next yr constituted a lull, with only one such request, whereas 9 have been made final yr, together with by EU neighbours equivalent to Türkiye, Algeria, North Macedonia and Albania.

2021 grew to become the second-worst wildfire season within the EU since 2000, surpassed solely by 2017 when over 1 million hectares (ha) burned within the EU. At the very least 86 folks misplaced their lives. 

Drought and fires

As predicted, the 2022 season can be proving notably powerful. At the very least three folks have now misplaced their lives as they took half in firefighting efforts together with the pilot of a combating plane in Portugal and two crew members of a firefighting helicopter in Greece. 

A whole bunch of firefighters in Portugal, Spain, Italy and France have been tackling a number of blazes on Monday.

These are fanned by a heatwave pushing temperatures in some components above 40°C and facilitated by a months-long drought in Europe that “might develop into the worst ever”, Maroš Šefčovič, the European Fee’s vice-president for inter-institutional relations, already warned in early June.

The EU sought to arrange its assets higher forward of this season, pre-positioning greater than 200 firefighters from a number of member states in Greece, the place stunning scenes of individuals speeding to boats to flee flames within the lifeless of the evening have been noticed in Evia final yr. 

The Fee additionally financed the stand-by availability of a rescEU fleet of 12 firefighting planes and 1 helicopter put collectively by Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden and on the disposal of different member states in case of an emergency.