Firefighters are now used to busy summers across Europe, as drier, longer sunshine months increase the likelihood of fires. It has even prompted the EU to create a dedicated crisis management scheme to help coordinate efforts on the ground and funding.
But the programme is not enough to respond to every request for assistance. The EU’s head of crisis management, Slovenia’s Janez Lenarčić, admitted at an emergency meeting this week that some governments had not asked for help because they knew none was available.
“At European level we have reached our capacity limit. Some overwhelming fires in some member states did in fact not lead to a request for assistance. The states in need knew that no capacities would have been available,” he told ministers from across Europe.
It has prompted a response from national governments though, who are largely united in wanting to boost the EU programme’s resources, chiefly because pretty much every country is in some...