EU mobilizes as wildfires rage across Europe; French PM faces backlash in fire-hit region

Across Europe on Monday, a continent was burning. In Belgium, a wildfire that had been raging since Friday afternoon had consumed more than 3,000 hectares of the Hautes Fagnes nature reserve, making it the country's largest modern wildfire. The blaze crept steadily toward the German border, forcing precautionary evacuations in the town of Monschau. King Philippe visited the emergency coordination centre that morning to observe the firefighting operation firsthand, a symbolic acknowledgment of the scale of the crisis unfolding in the eastern part of his country.

The terrain itself was working against the firefighters. The High Fens is a patchwork of heath, peat bogs, and raised wooden boardwalks—ground so unstable that heavy equipment risks sinking into the earth. Aerial support became essential. By Monday, helicopters from Norway and Germany were hauling water to areas crews could not safely reach on foot. The head of Belgian firefighters, Marc Gilbert, was already calling for urgent recruitment and greater integration of the EU's firefighting fleet across borders. Light rain and shifting winds offered some relief overnight, helping to slow the fire's eastward spread, though the blaze continued to grow northeastward. A fire department captain told Belgian radio that the rainfall would change everything: the water itself mattered, but so did the humidity it would bring.

The European Commission mobilized its civil protection mechanism. Two Swedish planes were dispatched to Belgium, joined by two helicopters each from the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany. In Spain, where wildfires had raged for a week and threatened a thousand-year-old monastery, 104 French firefighters and 36 vehicles arrived to reinforce local efforts. The EU also deployed satellite mapping through its Copernicus service to track the fires' movement. Across the continent, the scale of the emergency was undeniable: in Greece, two people had died on the island of Salamis when fires broke out near packed beaches on Sunday, forcing nearly 600 people to evacuate by boat. In Portugal, five firefighters were injured when their vehicle caught fire near the village of Dine. A Spanish soldier died while fighting a wildfire in Aragon.

In France, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu arrived in Le Porge, one of the towns most devastated by a massive wildfire in the Gironde region the previous month, only to be booed by residents as he stepped out of his vehicle. The anger was palpable and specific. Some locals alleged that authorities had prioritized protecting the upscale Cap-Ferret peninsula—a holiday destination for affluent Parisians—over defending the homes of ordinary residents. Lecornu left Le Porge without engaging freely with the crowd, a move some residents called disrespectful. They placed an empty chair as a symbol of his absence. He later met with selected representatives in the nearby town of Mérignac and pushed back hard against what he called conspiracy theories about the firefighting response. "We have absolutely nothing to hide," he said, insisting that all key decisions had been made locally through a decentralized tactical approach.

Yet Lecornu also came bearing concrete commitments. The government would provide 12 million euros in immediate aid to Gironde and Landes, the two departments hardest hit by the blazes. The state would fast-track planning permissions to accelerate reconstruction, help residents extract payouts from insurance companies, and provide tax and social contribution relief to affected businesses. He also promised support for rehousing those who had lost their homes. But beyond the immediate crisis, Lecornu sounded an alarm about what might come next. The wildfires, he warned, could herald another disaster: floods in the autumn and winter months. Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham had made the same connection days earlier, noting that experts had warned of a wet autumn and winter driven by the El Niño effect. After fire, he said, could come floods.

In Greece, authorities offered a measure of hope. The fire service said the blazes on Salamis had been largely extinguished by Monday morning, with over 200 firefighters and two helicopters remaining in the area to ensure containment. The country's weather agency reported that conditions were expected to improve on Tuesday, allowing the wildfire risk level to be downgraded from level 3 to level 2 out of 5 in most regions—though parts of Attica, including Athens, and central Greece would remain at the higher alert level. The reprieve came after weeks of extreme fires that had claimed at least seven lives across the continent.

In the United Kingdom, where temperatures had reached 38 degrees Celsius during the country's fifth heatwave of the summer, conditions were cooling. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner visited the burnt-out remains of homes in Stourbridge in the West Midlands, where a wildfire the previous week had destroyed 19 properties. Residents who had been evacuated were now being allowed to return and view what remained of their homes. The Met Office forecast heavy showers for Thursday, with the possibility of surface flooding in areas where rainfall was particularly intense. The cycle was becoming visible: extreme heat driving wildfires, then the threat of extreme rain driving floods. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on social media that Europe's solidarity was in full flight, with teams deployed to the countries most affected. But as the fires continued to burn and the season turned, the question hanging over the continent was not whether the immediate crisis would pass, but whether Europe's systems—its firefighting resources, its disaster response, its ability to adapt—could keep pace with what climate breakdown was delivering.