While the first major wildfires of the summer have already ravaged several thousand hectares in France and Portugal (see EUROPE 13903/3), MEPs debated, during the plenary session on Wednesday 8 July, Europe’s preparedness strategy in the face of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly violent.
On behalf of the incoming Presidency of the EU Council, the Irish Minister of State for European Affairs and Defence, Thomas Byrne, stressed the importance of the proposed regulation amending the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM). A text intended to “ensure appropriate financing priorities” and on which Dublin has hopes “of reaching a general approach during our semester”.
Acknowledging that the fire season started “unusually early” this year, triggering activations of the UCPM as early as April, Hadja Lahbib, the European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, also recalled the strategies already deployed to harmonise the European response to fires (see EUROPE 13836/6, 13879/2).
For their part, MEPs set out several structural demands. Ana Miguel Pedro (EPP, Portuguese) first proposed making rescEU “a permanent EU firefighting force”, equipped with its own aircraft and “multinational brigades” pre-positioned in the continent’s most vulnerable regions.
Carmen Crespo (EPP, Spanish), for her part, regretted that the Member States had not made full use of NextGenerationEU recovery funds to anticipate crises, pointing out the “need to flexibilise directives” on the environment so as to allow rural populations to carry out brush-clearing work (necessary to stop the potential spread of fire).
Conversely, several MEPs argued for stronger measures, particularly on the human and social dimensions of the climate crisis. Pointing to the excess mortality among outdoor workers during heatwaves, Estelle Ceulemans (S&D, Belgian) called for the swift adoption of a directive “to protect workers exposed to infernal temperatures” on building sites or in fields.
Lastly, Martin Hojsík (Renew Europe, Slovak) called for systemic failings in care infrastructure to be addressed, recalling that, in the absence of air conditioning in many hospitals, vulnerable patients and healthcare staff sometimes have to endure temperatures reaching “42 degrees indoors”. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)