The fires have quite literally been spreading like wildfires, raging across many countries across the continent. Spain alone has already faced 366 wildfires since the start of the year, which were fuelled by scorching temperatures and drought conditions exacerbated by climate change. Even Luxembourg wasn’t spared, and firefighters were always quickly on the spot and able to control the fires.
Eurostat made it its mission to take a closer look at firefighters in the EU. In 2021, about 365 thousand people were employed as professional firefighters, representing 0.2% of total EU employment.
Estonia, Cyprus, Romania, and Slovakia registered the highest share of firefighters in their respective work forces, all around 0.4% of total employment.
Most European firefighters are relatively young, with the age groups 35 - 39 years and 40 - 44 years having the highest numbers of people, around 61,000 each.
Over 50,000 firefighters were older than 55 years.
In 2020, general government expenditure in the 27 EU Member States on “fire protection services” amounted to €32.9 billion.
The share of government expenditure on fire protection in total expenditure varies from one Member State to another.
Denmark for example reported the lowest share of expenditure with a total of 0.1%.
In 2020, Denmark reported the lowest share of expenditure on fire protection services in total expenditure at 0.1%, followed by Iceland with 0.2% and Belgium, Malta, Austria, Portugal and Slovenia with 0.3% of their general government total expenditure.
In contrast, Romania had the highest share of expenditure on fire protection services with 0.8%, followed by Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania and Luxembourg with 0.6%.
