The Minister for the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Tuesday that France would be sending reinforcements to assist our Greek colleagues, who have now been battling violent forest fires in the Athens region for two days. France will therefore be sending two Canadair aircraft, one reconnaissance aircraft and eighteen firefighters.
Indeed, under the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism, established in 2001, one Member State may offer assistance to another Member State to help bring a large-scale emergency under control which a single country’s civil protection services cannot manage on their own. France itself received assistance from countries such as Germany, Austria, Poland and Romania during the forest fires that raged in Gironde last summer.