Firefighters are fighting 32 forest fires this Friday, July 24, said Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. Three of them are proving particularly destructive: the fire in the Var which has covered 3,700 hectares since Tuesday; the one which destroyed more than 10,000 hectares in Gironde and led to the evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula; the one which reached the gates of the town of Biscarrosse, destroying more than 2500 hectares in just one night.
Faced with these multiple fronts, France has activated the civil protection mechanism of the European Union (EU), announced Emmanuel Macron on the night of Thursday July 23 to Friday July 24.
The situation remains under very high tension in the face of the fires which are hitting the country, particularly in Gironde.
My thoughts are with our firefighters and rescue forces who are fighting tirelessly on the front lines of the flames. Their courage commands respect.…
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) July 23, 2026
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“We will be able to quickly count on the reinforcement of two Croatian Canadairs, two Portuguese Air Tractors as well as two Czech and Slovak Black Hawk heavy helicopters,” said the President of the Republic. Spain, affected by violent fires, particularly near Madrid, also requested “four air assets” for reinforcement from Brussels.
Shared civil protection resources
It is the European civil protection mechanism which ensures the delivery and deployment of aid. This system was created in 2001 in order to promote cooperation between national civil protection authorities in Europe in the event of a crisis, fire, flood, earthquake, epidemic, etc. In addition to the Twenty-Seven, several third countries participate: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iceland, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine.
The European Commission finances the general operation of the mechanism and covers a large part of the training expenses and the cost of missions. States are then tasked with making available, on a voluntary basis, their means of civil protection to their neighbors who request them.
Since 2019, the system no longer relies solely on the goodwill of member countries but also on the “RescEU” strategic reserve. The EU intends to gradually build its own intervention capacity by directly managing certain means (planes, helicopters and equipment) which are made available to it by States when they do not need them directly. For the moment, France is “lending” a Dash 8 aircraft and could in the future put two Canadairs which have been ordered and should arrive from 2030.
First activation in France in 2022
Since its creation, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism has been activated more than 830 times within and outside the Union, including 64 times in 2025.
France called on it for the first time in the summer of 2022. Faced with the multiplication of devastating fires in Gironde (already), in the Pyrénées-Orientales, in Maine-et-Loire and as far as Brittany, the French civil security air fleet had proven insufficient. Thanks to the European solidarity mechanism, French relief efforts were supported by firefighters from Germany, Austria, Poland and Romania, as well as two water bombers from the RescEU system.
Floods, cyclone Chido… the mechanism activated in other situations
The European system also helped deal with repeated floods in Pas-de-Calais in 2023 and early 2024. Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia and the Czech Republic had made eight pumps available to evacuate the water. In December 2024, European solidarity was also requested to address the humanitarian and health crisis following the passage of Cyclone Chido in Mayotte.
More recently, on July 5, France activated the European mechanism to deal with fires in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The European Commission has mobilized four RescEU aircraft from Sweden and Cyprus to support the French forces.
