The European Commission's support for member states during this year's fire season will be boosted, Commission and Greek Fire Department officials said at a technical briefing on Wednesday.
Zacharias Giakoumis, head of the Communications section of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO), said that the assistance for 2025 is based on three pillars - aerial means, prepositioning European firefighters, and providing technical know-how to countries that need it.
Some 641 firefighters from 14 European countries will be strategically placed on standby at critical high-threat areas in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain to help local firefighters. Some 22 firefighting aircraft and 4 helicopters will be stationed at 10 countries to intervene if necessary, Giakoumis said.
Greece in particular will get 4 amphibian mid-sized aircraft. In addition, the European Commission is investing significant funds in acquiring 12 new firefighting airplanes and 5 helicopters. "The first helicopters are expected to be delivered in 2026, while the first Canadair is expected to arrive at the end of 2027 or the start of 2028. The first of these is expected to arrive in Greece, and is under construction right now," the EU official added.
He also revealed that the EU's Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) will set up a special support group of 29 fire experts from June 16 to September 19 to follow fire threats and analyse data. The experts, he noted, will include a Greek and a Cypriot colleague.
Support to Greece
Concerning preventative measures, he said that Greece has significantly benefited from Civil Protection Mechanism programs, and was one of the first to ask to be evaluated for threat, along with Italy and Germany's Bradenburg state. Cooperation between Greece and the European Commission is year round, he said.
On his side, Deputy Fire Department Chief Vassilis Bikas, coordinator of the Association of Fire Department Foreign Missions Officers, presented detailed data on the prepositioning program of European firefighters that began on a trial basis in Greece in 2022.
This year, he said, a total of 14 countries will participate, 3 of them for the first time. Some 641 firefighters will be distributed among Greece, France, and Portugal. Specifically, Greece will receive 50% of European firefighters, or 323, from July 1 to September 15. The first to arrive will be the Bulgarian firefighters (40 people), based in Thessaloniki, ending with Romanian and French firefighters (120 and 25, respectively). Another 50 from Austria, 44 from Moldova, and 44 from the Czech Republic will be assigned to Patras and Attica.
As Bikas explained, it is the second consecutive year that Greece will send correspondingly a unit of forest operations to France. "We are particularly happy because this time we shall send our forces to the island of Corsica. In addition, for three consecutive years, French firefighters assigned to Greece have come from the particular unit from the island of Corsica," he added.
In terms of the program's development, Bikas noted that Greece is a destination in demand for European firefighters because is serves as "an open university for forest fires, where both an experienced firefighter and a less experienced one will come here to learn by the side of the more experienced Greek firefighters, fatefully, as we have to face small, or large, or very large forest fires on a daily basis."
Bikas also noted that "Greece has a leading role in the mechanism, as it has activated it 13 times to now since 2016, to its benefit, but on the other it has also responded 54 times, and the balance clearly leans toward our contribution." There is no spare in the fight for the climate crisis, he noted.