Next summer, the European Union will have double the capacity of aerial means of fighting fires compared to last year, assured this Tuesday in Lisbon the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic.
Janez Lenarcic participates in Lisbon in a seminar on the lessons learned from the 2022 rural fire season, which takes place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with representatives from more than 30 countries.
The commissioner highlighted that the member states were “invited” to express their interest in increasing their capacity and Portugal is among the countries that have already “expressed their interest in being part of this reinforced capacity of firefighting aircraft “, within the scope of of the european union program “rescEU”, which provides, among other measures, a permanent air fleet to fight fires.
“To answer your question, yes, we will have that capacity of aircraft, planes and helicopters , which will be double what we had last year, installed in time before the fire season,” he said, in a press conference.
Lenarcic also highlighted that “many Member States have expressed their interest, including Portugal, in hosting” part of the pre-positioned means to act permanently in case of need at European level.
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