77,000 hectares went up in flames in Spain and 42,000 hectares in Gironde. Firefighters and civil protection services across Europe are heroically battling the flames. But everywhere the picture is bleak: resources are no longer adequate.
In France, the Canadair fleet is aging and partially grounded by breakdowns. At certain times, only three aircraft are operational.1 This is unreasonable.
Beyond fires, air pollution causes 350,000 deaths annually in Europe and thousands of illnesses. The cost to our health and environment from our carbon emissions would amount to as much as 420 billion euros per year.
After decades of neglect, we must shift into a higher gear.
In the years ahead, megafires will no longer be the exception, but the norm. Facing this new reality, we must build the continent's climate resilience.
The urgency: Upgrading European wildfire response
First, there is an urgent need to renew Europe's Canadair fleets, crippled by recurring breakdowns of aging aircraft.
Above all, it is unreasonable that the protection of our citizens rests on the production capacity of a single Canadian company.
We must build the "European Canadair" by accelerating funding and development of European aircraft projects, such as those by Hynaero or Kepplair.
To do this, we must:
- Triple the budget for European civil protection, which must rise from 3.3 billion for 2021-2027 to more than 10 billion after 2028.
- Mobilize the common defense borrowing tool (SAFE) and the European Solidarity Pool: to order strategic transport aircraft like the A400M (dual-use civil and military), equipped with water-bombing and fire-retardant kits.
- Mobilize the European competitiveness fund to get European aircraft projects off the ground and strengthen Copernicus services (the EU's earth observation satellite service), a key element for fire monitoring.
Water-bombing aircraft must be supported by helicopters, but also in the future by tactical surveillance drones and firefighting drones—complementary and low-cost.
We can no longer privatize profits and socialize the consequences of climate change
A systemic approach is needed to rethink climate resilience financing.
With public debt at 117% of GDP and a tax burden rate of 44%, we cannot reasonably ask taxpayers to finance the fallout from pollution profits.
We must finally apply the polluter-pays principle:
In fact, major oil companies have made significant money from the right to emit CO₂ free of charge. They must help protect us from the consequences of warming: in the second quarter of 2026, TotalEnergies announced a net result of 5.2 billion euros.
Our primary tool for restoring polluter-pays balance is the European carbon quota market. In its current form, it raises 30 to 40 billion per year, of which about 2 billion goes to France.
In its ongoing revision, we must expand its scope to all flights departing from Europe, including business aviation, while directing revenues toward combating climate change and building resilience.
More broadly:
- The 110 billion in annual fossil fuel subsidies paid out across the EU must be redirected to fighting climate change and its consequences.
- E-commerce platforms benefit from the single market, so they too must contribute to its proper functioning: through enhanced import taxes and the introduction of delivery taxes in low-emission zones.
This financial resource must strengthen European resilience against disasters
The resilience of our forests against fires today rests on European funds whose sustainability is not guaranteed within the next EU multiannual financial framework.
- The EAFRD2, the second pillar of the CAP, co-finances with the State and Regions the creation of access roads for emergency services, the installation of water points and cisterns, fuel cuts that slow fire spread, and reforestation with species more drought-resistant.
- The ERDF3, within cohesion policy, finances large-scale natural disaster prevention infrastructure, such as access and evacuation roads in at-risk zones, shared water reserves, or forest monitoring systems.
Yet, in its proposed EU multiannual budget for 2028-2034, the Commission plans to merge these two historic pillars into single national plans, with the CAP cut by 20% and cohesion funds reduced by 12%.4 It also eliminates the LIFE program, which currently funds forest ecosystem restoration projects after fires and forest management adapted to climate change.
We must protect these budgets, as the European Parliament stated in its April 28 report5: forest fire prevention must not be a budget adjustment variable.
A European insurance safety net against climate disasters
Finally, Europe underinsures its catastrophes. Between 1980 and 2024, barely a quarter of economic losses from extreme events were covered by insurance (only 17% of EU citizens are covered today), according to the European Insurance Authority (EIOPA).
Last year, despite a historic fire season—the worst in thirty years for Spain, with severe fires in France, Italy, Greece, and Portugal—**no single fire loss exceeded the symbolic threshold of one billion dollars in insured losses on the continent.
Forests burn, residents pay the price, but most of the bill escapes insurers and falls on households and public finances instead.
Facing this reality, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and EIOPA presented a two-tier proposal in April 2026, which should be implemented before next summer:
A first pillar in the form of a reinsurance pool at European scale: insurers and national schemes pay a premium calculated according to actual risk. The benefit is simple: a forest fire in Greece and a flood in Belgium do not occur on the same day or in the same place. By pooling risks by peril and geographic zone across the continent, the pool allows available capital to be used far more efficiently than at the level of a single country.
The second pillar would be a safety net for events exceeding the pool's capacity—a mega-catastrophe, or multiple countries hit simultaneously. Thanks to its high credit rating, the ESM could then borrow on markets at favorable rates and lend these funds to the pool, which redistributes them to insurers and national schemes.
The capacity needed for this system would be between 10 and 65 billion euros depending on the scope of covered risks—a modest amount compared to the growing bill for catastrophes, but one that could be game-changing for millions of uninsured Europeans.
We are therefore not condemned to watch summer 2026 repeat itself indefinitely: profit from pollution must be socialized for this purpose, and European solidarity must be made concrete.
- General Report No. 139 (2025-2026), Volume III, Annex 28, Volume 2, filed November 24, 2025 on the Draft Budget Law for 2026 (Civil Security). ↩
- European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development ↩
- European Regional Development Fund ↩
- Senate, information report No. 25-532, On negotiations on the multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2028-2034. ↩
- European Parliament interim report on the proposal for a multiannual financial framework for 2028-2034. ↩