The Commission is financing the purchase of new firefighting planes to increase the aerial firefighting capacity of rescEU, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism's strategic crisis response reserve. €600 million in EU funds will be used to purchase 12 new planes, which will be hosted across 6 EU Member States: Croatia, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

These new planes will be used to extinguish fires across the European Union, in particular during the difficult summer months when lives, homes and livelihoods are coming increasingly under threat to large scale forest fires. They will be delivered as of 2027, with the existing rescEU transition planes operating until the whole fleet is operational.