Firefighters from 19 countries protest EU disaster budget cuts in Brussels

Around 1,000 firefighters from 19 countries gathered in Brussels on Tuesday (3 November) to demand more equipment, more staff, and adequate healthcare, only weeks before key EU budget negotiations. With wildfires growing bigger and more often due to climate change, there needs to be more professional firefighters, with modern equipment, to face them, argues the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), who organised the protest together with various Belgian workers’ organisations. As of 7 October, 692 419 hectares burnt in wildfires across the EU this year – an area almost as big as the Greek island of Crete – burning some 30 million tonnes of CO2. Southern countries, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain, suffered most. According to the World Health Organisation, wildfires in Europe have increased by 57 percent since 2022. On average, wildfires cause some €2.5bn losses across the EU each year. The protest gathered in front of a conference on civil protection organised by the EU Commission, where crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib presented new guidelines on what citizens should prepare for the first days of an emergency. The firefighters and unions were there to protest the cuts to the next EU budget for disaster management: from over €10bn requested by the commission to just under €7bn proposed by the Irish presidency last month. Yet that would still be double what the 2021-2027 budget had room for. “I believe that the risk is getting bigger. So yes, it's necessary to also increase the support,” Tiago da Cunha, president of a municipality in northern Portugal, where the most summer wildfires hit in 2026, told EUobserver. Stalo Yostili, 43, has been a firefighter in Cyprus for a decade. She said her country does not recognise how dangerous the profession is. She complained of too few staff, which means for an operation that would normally need 15 firefighters, only six are sent, making it more potentially dangerous. Profession-specific healthcare is also a big topic, Ireneusz Kierzkowski from the Polish firefighter union, told EUobserver. Retired firefighters often have PTSD, and they also develop cancers more often.