European authorities are confronting increasingly extreme wildfire seasons as climate change amplifies each blaze. The EU has made real progress coordinating emergency response through the Civil Protection Mechanism and the rescEU reserve of firefighting aircraft and equipment. But while satellites can map fires from space and countries can share resources across borders, one fundamental question remains largely unanswered: who started the fire?
Intentional ignition is still treated as a purely national issue. Criminal laws, investigation methods and reporting practices vary widely across the bloc, creating a blind spot that the European Commission has acknowledged but not yet resolved. The result is that Europe can track a fire's spread in real time but has no comparable picture of who sets deliberate fires or why.
What counts as arson?
Wildfire agencies generally classify fires by cause: natural, accidental, intentional or unknown. Natural fires are mostly linked to lightning. Human-caused fires account for the overwhelming majority of ignitions in Europe, but that category spans very different situations — accidental fires from machinery, agricultural work, campfires, fireworks or discarded cigarettes, as well as fires set deliberately.
There is no harmonised EU definition of arson. Criminal law remains a national competence, and countries differ in how they treat forest fires legally, making comparisons difficult. Spain and Portugal have specific offences for forest fires, reflecting the fact that the damage extends beyond private property to ecosystems and public safety. Germany, by contrast, approaches arson through a broader hierarchy of offences under its criminal code, with the most serious categories tied to danger to human life. Under French law, setting fire to "another person's woods, forests, heathland, scrubland, plantations or reforested areas" is punishable by up to 15 years' imprisonment and a €150,000 fine where the offence risks bodily injury or irreversible environmental damage.
A Joint Research Centre review of wildfire ignition factors identified several motivations behind intentional fires, including pasture renewal, vandalism, retaliation against private individuals or public authorities, and conflicts over land management. Some southern European countries have tried to remove one possible economic incentive: the prospect that burned land could later become more valuable or easier to develop. Spain introduced a 30-year restriction on changing the status of burned forest land, and Portugal a similar 10-year limit. Researchers caution, however, that land speculation is only one of several possible motivations.
The challenge of understanding intentional fires comes at a time when the consequences of every ignition are becoming increasingly severe. Climate change does not necessarily create more people willing to start fires, but it creates conditions in which the same ignition is far more likely to become a large-scale disaster. The European Commission has warned that hotter summers, prolonged droughts and heatwaves dry out vegetation and increase the likelihood that fires spread rapidly. In 2025, the Commission said the cumulative burned area in the EU exceeded one million hectares, the highest level recorded in the bloc's wildfire monitoring history and comparable to the size of Cyprus.
The EU's Copernicus Earth observation programme has transformed wildfire monitoring through the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), providing fire danger forecasts, satellite-based location and spread data. But satellites cannot determine whether an ignition was deliberate, identify who was responsible, or establish a motive. For that, authorities still depend on national police investigations, forensic evidence and local knowledge.
Some regions are experimenting with new tools. Galicia has deployed AI and satellite detection to combat summer megafires, but such initiatives remain local. The EU's wildfire database relies on information supplied by national authorities, and the quality and completeness of that data vary enormously. Without a common framework, Europe is fighting fires with one hand tied behind its back — excellent at response, but still in the dark about the ignition itself.
