The European Commissioner for Crisis Management acknowledged on Monday that the European Union must strengthen the means of fighting forest fires by 2023, after the European civil protection mechanism reached its limit this summer.
Speaking at the opening of an emergency coordination ministerial meeting on strengthening EU fire preparedness and response, which he convened for this day in Brussels, Commissioner Janez Lenarcic pointed out that, since last June, 11 requests for assistance have been received within the framework of the European framework. Civil Protection Mechanism, acknowledging that there were no further requests for assistance from member states facing major fires”as the affected countries knew that there would be no capacities available“.
Such was the case of Portugal, which in August refrained from formally reactivating the European assistance mechanism to combat the fire in the Serra da Estrela Natural Park, aware that it did not have the means, given that it had already committed to fighting fires in other Member States.
The commissioner began by pointing out that this summer there has been “an alarming acceleration in the spread of forest fires throughout Europe”, and has pointed out that, “although this year’s fire season is not over yet, it has already beaten all records”, with a total burned area of more than 750 thousand hectares”,about three times the size of Luxembourg“, and pointed to the specific case of the Serra da Estrela.
“The images that we have all seen of the Gironde, in France, of the Serra da Estrela Natural Park, in Portugal, but also of the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, the Carso regions, between Italy and Slovenia will remain with us. . as a reminder of the seriousness of the wildfires that are occurring on this continent,” he emphasized.
Paying tribute to all those who “put their lives at risk” to fight the fires and pointing out that “the European emergency services are doing a truly heroic job”, the European commissioner commented that “European solidarity remains intact, thanks to the strategic decisions made in previous years to mobilize capacities also at the Europe and share them across borders.
However, he stressed, it is necessarydo more, including at European level“, in particular, it is necessary to “find ways to alleviate the national burden more quickly”, since “solidarity across Europe, when many countries are affected at the same time, cannot be taken for granted”.
“Our emergency services still contain ongoing fires. However, as policymakers, we have to look to the future,” he said, arguing that there is a need to understand how one can “fill this year’s capacity gaps, before they can emerge again next year”.
In the hope that today’s informal meeting will be the beginning of this debate on the “general need to strengthen the capacity for prevention, preparedness and response to forest fires”, so that, jointly, the EU can decide on the actions to undertake at European level, within the framework of the civil protection mechanism, the commissioner immediately highlighted one of the visible gaps in this year’s response, saying that “everyone recognizes that aerial means of firefighting were the biggest challenge“.
“The way the market is organized means we need to act now if we want to avoid gaps in response capacity next year. That means we have to reserve additional capacity in the commercial market now, for next summer,” he said.
Before the meeting that takes place during the afternoon in Brussels, the European Commissioner met with the Minister for Internal Administration, José Luís Carneiro, who represents Portugal at the ministerial meeting, and who will make statements to the press.
“A good meeting with the Minister of Internal Administration José Luís Carneiro on the record season of forest fires this summer in Europe and ways to further strengthen the Civil Protection Mechanism to be able to face the increasingly intense impacts of climate change. The moment to act has comeCommissioner Janez Lenarcic wrote on his official Twitter account.
After a devastating summer with thousands of hectares of forest lost in Europe due to #forest fires, today I am convening a ministerial emergency response coordination meeting in Brussels to boost MS and EU preparedness for future seasons. There is no time for the waist. pic.twitter.com/QKCuzTWikZ
— Janez Lenarcic (@JanezLenarcic) September 5, 2022
On August 18, the national commander of Civil Protection stated that Portugal had not formally activated the European aid mechanism to fight the Serra da Estrela fire due to a lack of available resources, due to fires in other member states.
“The mechanism has not been activated because it has already been activated by other countries and the media are already engaging in other countries,” André Fernandes said on the occasion, noting that the European civil protection mechanism is used according to the availability of media. existing
The previous week, the Prime Minister, António Costa, had also indicated that no more air resources from the European mechanism were used because the countries were at that time with “less availability of media sharingdue to the continuous fires even in territories where they were scarce, such as Germany, in addition to not having their own European means.
Source: Observadora
