The Minister Delegate in charge of Local Authorities, Caroline Cayeux, wishes to strengthen European mobilization in the face of forest fires, through the increase of air resources and the standardization of operating methods, according to a press release published on Tuesday. “Faced with the dramatic forest fires that raged this summer, European solidarity showed our fellow citizens that Europe was ready to protect us. From now on, it is necessary to resize the civil protection mechanism in the light of the challenges of tomorrow, in particular that of climate change“, said Ms. Cayeux after an exchange Monday with her European counterparts.
According to a press release from the Ministry of the Interior, Caroline Cayeux wore during this meeting “French priorities and requests from partner States and the European Commission“, namely in particular the “increase in air assets and strengthening of their funding“.
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In August, Emmanuel Macron had already estimated that France should equip itself with “any furtherof firefighting aircraft and had called for “redeploy an industrial strategyto build these devices. Caroline Cayeux also called for a “approximation of operating methods between States», via joint education and training projects.
During the summer, up to 10,000 French firefighters a day were mobilized by the fires which ravaged 62,000 hectares of forest, a record for the largest area burned at this stage of the year since the start of satellite data. in 2006, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). Eight planes, 101 vehicles and 364 firefighters from other European countries intervened as reinforcements according to the ministry, which welcomes the “mobilizationof the Partner States and theefficiencyfrom the European Crisis Center.