Is the EU failing to prevent forest fires?

More than a million hectares of EU forest burned this year by the end of August, according to data provided by the Copernicus satellite, used for Earth observation. This is almost five times larger than the area affected by forest fires in the EU the previous year. 

The most affected member states were Portugal with 3% of territory burned, Cyprus with 2,3% and Spain with 0,8%. 

In recent years, the European Commission has positioned standby teams managed by the Emergency Response Coordination Center, to assist member states. In 2025, a pool of 22 planes and 650 firefighters was made available by 14 member states.   

"The goal here is to ensure faster response time, but also enable valuable underground knowledge sharing, which is particularly relevant because of climate change. Wildfires are increasingly spreading to areas of Europe where they didn't happen so much, such as Northern and Eastern Europe," said Alice Tidey, who's been covering the issue for Euronews. 

Activists and scientists claim that governments still fail to prioritise prevention. MEP Catarina Martins, from the Left political group at the European Parliament, agrees with that assessment and is particularly worried that agriculture and rural development will be downgraded in the EU's long term budget for 2028-2034. 

"There is no effort for adaptation of agriculture nor an adaptation of forestry policy, nor territorial cohesion. What is being decided on the European Union's upcoming financial frameworks tends to worsen this situation. We are spending and promising to spend billions on defence industries that will not actually protect the European population," said Martins, who sits on the Parliament's environment committee. 

The European Commission funds several projects for long-term wildfire resilience and established an Action Plan in 2022, but there has been criticism from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) over how some governments have used them. 

"ECA  flagged that a lot of the decisions are made using widely out-of-date data. So in Greece, for instance, which is traditionally very impacted by wildfire, the list of areas prone to wildfire is 45 years old," according to Euronews' Alice Tidey. 

"Let's remember that Europe is the continent that is warming the fastest. This isn't something far away, the risks are here: we'll have floods again, we'll have fires again, we'll have this scares again. And therefore, climate policy really cannot be abandoned," the MEP added. 

In the meantime, the The EU has  promised to strengthen its firefighting capabilities to assist countries most affected. Between 2026 and 2029, a new fleet of 12 planes and 5 helicopters, financed by the European Commission, will be permanently deployed in France, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Croatia. 

Watch the video here! 

Journalist: Isabel Marques da Silva 

Content production: Pilar Montero López 

Video production: Zacharia Vigneron 

Graphism: Loredana Dumitru 

Editorial coordination: Ana Lázaro Bosch and Jeremy Fleming-Jones