The cost of fighting forest fires in France, Spain and other parts of Europe in 2026 has exceeded 3 billion euros, according to the Financial Times (FT).
According to the newspaper, nearly 500,000 hectares of forest have burned in the first two months of the fire season. According to Sarah Mayer, a climate economics expert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, “if the fires reach the cities, the damage will be much greater“.
According to the newspaper, the fires have damaged, among other things, key plants in one of France's defense and aerospace industry centers in the Gironde department in the southwest of the country. The fires forced jet engine maker Safran, fighter jet maker Dassault Aviation and rocket maker ArianeGroup to halt production and evacuate staff.
Europe experienced extremely hot weather in the second half of June. Temperatures in western European countries exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. On July 9, the European Earth Observatory (EHO) “Copernicus“ confirmed that June was the hottest month on record, with an average surface temperature of 20.74 degrees Celsius.