Photo by Kyle Cleveland on Unsplash
The EU says it is financing the purchase of new firefighting planes to increase its aerial firefighting capabilities.
Some €600 million in EU funds will be used to purchase 12 new planes, which will be hosted across 6 EU Member States: Croatia, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain.
The new planes will be used to extinguish fires across the European Union, in particular during the difficult summer months when lives, homes and livelihoods are coming increasingly under threat to large scale forest fires.
They will be delivered as of 2027, with the existing rescEU transition planes operating until the whole fleet is operational. rescEU is the EU Civil Protection Mechanism’s strategic crisis response reserve.
The announcement comes as Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic participated in Zagreb in the signature ceremony of the agreement between the government of Croatia and the Canadian Commercial Corporation to purchase specialised firefighting aircraft.
The EU says that this, together with the signature of a similar agreement by the government of Greece recently, marks a step in increasing the aerial firefighting capacity in the EU, protecting EU citizens from disasters.
Five years ago, the European Commission upgraded the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and created rescEU to protect citizens from disasters and manage emerging risks.
Fully funded by the EU, rescEU was established as a reserve of European capacities, and it includes a fleet of firefighting planes and helicopters.
In 2023 alone, rescEU was deployed 35 times for a total estimated value of €110 million of assistance, including in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the earthquakes that hit Türkiye, and the wildfires in Tunisia and Greece.
Janez Lenarčič, Commissioner for Crisis Management, said, “It has been a couple of years since the European Commission has initiated the process to scale up aerial firefighting capacities in Europe. I congratulate Croatia as well as Greece, who were the earliest to sign into reality the first planes of what will form a new generation of European firefighting aerial capacity.
“And I thank Canada for facilitating these agreements with the company concerned resuming production of these very much needed planes.
“This is an important step to acquiring the aircraft which will help protect citizens not just in Croatia and Greece but across Europe. It will be 100% paid for by the European Commission as part of our strengthened rescEU firefighting capacity ready to fight ever more intense wildfires in Europe.”
