European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that the European Union must adapt its civil protection systems to a world of increasingly frequent, simultaneous and severe emergencies, as an exceptionally early wildfire season placed national firefighting services under growing pressure.
"We must be prepared for a world where extreme events happen more often, in more places, and at the same time," von der Leyen told reporters on Monday from the European Emergency Response Centre, a unit from the Commission’s civil protection department.
The Commission chief acknowledged that disasters are changing in nature as climate change is making extreme weather more volatile and crises can increasingly happen simultaneously and overwhelm individual countries.
Von der Leyen highlighted the multinational scale of this summer's wildfire response, saying the bloc’s civil protection mechanism has been activated 10 times for wildfires since April.
Nearly 800 firefighters were pre-positioned in high-risk areas, while teams from 25 countries were deployed during the summer, as four heatwaves were recorded in Europe since May.
