EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra announced Friday that the European Union will create a continentwide rapid reaction force of 300 firefighters drawn from across its 27 member states to tackle wildfires. Hoekstra said the force would be deployed quickly “where needed,” following a meeting of EU environment and climate ministers in Cyprus.
Speaking after the ministers’ meeting, Hoekstra said the EU decided in the last year to set up the unit. He acknowledged that the initiative might require more personnel and equipment later, but he called it “a huge step forward compared to some five years ago.”
Hoekstra described the firefighting force as a signal of unity and shared response capacity. “It is a clear sign of solidarity and that we want to tackle this together,” he told reporters at the press conference.
The commissioner did not specify where the new rapid reaction force will be based, nor did he say whether it would be activated in time for the summer wildfire season. In September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would set up a Cyprus-based regional firefighting hub that could also assist Middle East countries during major wildfire events.
Von der Leyen, in her annual address to the European Parliament, said the EU needed “to give ourselves the tools” to respond to wildfires made worse by climate change. In that address, she said summers are becoming “hotter, harsher and more dangerous.”
Hoekstra’s announcement also came alongside references to a recent study released in August that the EU said found climate change worsening summer wildfires in southern Europe. The study, by World Weather Attribution, described 2025 as Europe’s worst recorded year for wildfires and said fires were 22% more intense in 2025.
The EU-linked reporting on the study pointed to several conditions behind the eastern Mediterranean wildfires in June and July, including temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (about 104 Fahrenheit), extremely dry conditions and strong winds. It said those fires killed 20 people, forced 80,000 to evacuate and burned more than 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres), while also attributing an increased likelihood of similar outbreaks to climate change.
The same World Weather Attribution study said winter rainfall ahead of the wildfires had dropped by about 14% since the pre-industrial era, and it found that weeklong periods of dry, hot air that prime vegetation to burn are now 13 times more likely because of climate change.