Europe's wildfire strategy faces early test as blazes outpace prevention plans

The European Commission's wildfire strategy, unveiled in March, is facing its first major test as southern Europe battles one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, with large-scale evacuations in Spain and France exposing the limited progress made on prevention measures.

The strategy marked a shift in EU policy by prioritising wildfire prevention over emergency response. Rather than focusing primarily on firefighting aircraft and emergency deployments, the Commission argued that Europe needed to address the underlying conditions making wildfires more destructive, Euronews writes.

The plan called for measures including forest thinning, livestock grazing, restoration of abandoned farmland, and the rehabilitation of wetlands, peatlands and floodplains to reduce fire risks naturally. However, many of these proposals remain in the planning stage and are unlikely to have any impact on the fires already burning this summer.

As countries once again request EU assistance, Brussels has reverted to deploying rescEU firefighting aircraft, cross-border firefighting teams and civil protection resources—the same emergency tools the Commission had acknowledged were insufficient on their own to address worsening wildfire risks.

Speaking at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers on May 26, Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall said the Commission did "not plan any new initiatives on forest management" and did "not plan any additional indicators or guidelines at this point."

The Commission has acknowledged that decades of abandoned farmland, unmanaged forests, prolonged drought and rising temperatures have increased the amount of combustible vegetation across Europe. Its strategy argues that reducing these risks through long-term land management is essential to making forests and rural landscapes more resilient.

However, responsibility for forest management and land-use planning largely remains with EU member states, limiting the Commission's ability to implement reforms directly.

Several member states, including Sweden, Finland and at times France, have resisted expanding the EU's role in forest policy. France also helped delay the Nature Restoration Law in 2024 and has opposed giving Brussels greater influence over national forest management.

Similarly, several countries pushed back against the Commission's proposed Forest Monitoring Law throughout 2024, arguing it would grant the EU excessive oversight of national forestry policies.

The Commission's recommendation on integrated wildfire risk management, adopted on June 29, is non-binding, meaning implementation ultimately depends on national governments, regional authorities, landowners and farmers.

Environmental groups argue that longstanding forestry practices have contributed to the worsening fire situation.

Martin Pigeon, forest and climate campaigner at the NGO Fern, said the major wildfire currently affecting Gironde's pine plantations was "absolutely foreseeable."

"Some areas burning today had already burned 4 years ago, yet had been replanted with pines again! The mainstream forestry industry is trapped in a monoculture plantation-clearcut cycle whose costs are borne by the whole of society, but its grip on forestry policy has blocked any meaningful EU regulation of forest management so far," Pigeon told Euronews.

"How long is society going to pay the enormous economic, climate and health costs of this industry's comparably small profits?"

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that Europe's wildfire seasons are becoming longer, more intense and increasingly unpredictable.

The Commission has also acknowledged that expanding emergency response capacity alone will not be enough to address the growing threat unless long-term efforts to improve forest management and landscape resilience are fully implemented.

"We need to flag that forest management [...] is probably the best challenge that we need to do, to try to improve this situation for the incoming years," one Commission official privately conceded.

By Sabina Mammadli