Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and changes in precipitation patterns create more favourable conditions for wildfires. Wildfires are a serious problem throughout Europe. Although the fire frequency, the burned area, the fire behavior and factors contributing and causing fires have a general increase from North to South Europe, no country is exempted. They all have to face growing wildfire risk from increasing population density, and changes in land-use.

Burned scars during the 2022 fire season shows that the areas mostly hit are in the southern countries. The particularly critical period for the outbreak of fires in Europe is July and August, when the intensity of precipitation is very low, as well as February and March – in dry and warm winter conditions. The lengthening of the fire season and the occurrence of more extreme fire events are becoming concerning trends.

There were 121 annual WILDFIRES in Western Balkan countries and Turkey between 2006 and 2022. They burned thousands square kilometres of areas, killing people, animals and causing important damage to infrastructures.

During the summer of 2021 several extreme wildfires affected Western Balkans and Turkey.