EU to provide emergency support to help Greece and Albania tackle wildfires
The support for Greece will consist of both aerial and ground firefighting resources, Albania will receive a multipurpose military plane from Romania, which can carry up to 6 tonnes of water.
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00:00The EU is mobilizing emergency support for Greece and Albania, both of which have been
00:06tackling severe wildfires over the last few days.
00:11The support for Greece will consist of both aerial and ground firefighting resources,
00:16which will be provided by other European countries under the EU's civil protection mechanism.
00:22Specifically as regards the region of Attica in Greece, the commission has deployed two
00:27firefighting planes from Italy, a helicopter from France and another helicopter from Serbia.
00:33We are also sending in ground forces from five European countries.
00:38These include Czechia, France, Italy, Serbia and Romania.
00:42Now importantly this comes on top of the firefighters that we had already pre-positioned in Greece
00:48at the beginning of the season.
00:51Albania will receive a multi-purpose military plane from Romania, which can carry up to
00:56six tons of water.
00:59The two countries activated the EU's civil protection mechanism as they struggle to control
01:04several blazes which are ravaging the northern suburbs of Athens and the southern region
01:09of Albania.
01:12It also comes as the EU announced an extra six million euros in EU funds will be injected
01:18into the mechanism to increase its aerial firefighting capacity in response to the growing
01:23number and scale of summer wildfires across Europe.