Belgium Approves National Wildfire Action Plan

The Belgian federal government has approved a national action plan to combat wildfires, hardening the country’s prevention, preparedness and response capacity after a record-breaking blaze in the Hoge Venen nature reserve exposed serious gaps in its ability to fight large fires. The plan, reported by VRT NWS on 11 September, maps out what additional capabilities Belgium needs and how personnel, equipment and expertise can be deployed faster and more efficiently during extreme weather events.

The approval marks the federal government’s most concrete response yet to a fire season that scientists and emergency planners had warned was becoming increasingly dangerous for a country long considered relatively insulated from wildfire risk.

A record fire forces the issue

The action plan had been under discussion before this summer, but the wildfire that broke out in the Hoge Venen in mid-August “pressed the government’s nose to the facts,” as VRT NWS put it. The fire, in eastern Belgium near the German border, burned roughly 3,200 hectares by 19 August — the largest wildfire in the country since 1911. It required an international firefighting operation involving Belgian, Dutch, German, Luxembourgish and Swedish units, with the EU Civil Protection Mechanism activated.

“The approach must not only begin once the fire has already broken out,” Climate Minister Jean-Luc Crucke of Les Engagés said. “We must know the risks better, anticipate them better, warn better, and, when they do occur, be ready to intervene.”

Crucke added: “I would of course rather have seen events prove us wrong.”

Interior Minister Bernard Quintin of the MR framed the plan as an acknowledgement of a new reality. “Wildfires are no longer an exception in Belgium,” he said. “That is why we need this action plan. The better prepared we are, the faster we can intervene and the better we can protect our population.”

What the plan contains

The plan focuses on resources that can be deployed quickly and effectively, with particular attention to resupply, rapid upscaling, permanent monitoring of available and mobilised capacity, and cooperation between the various services.

It also addresses prevention, including faster warnings when fire risk is elevated, and examines how army support can be better planned and coordinated — including which military assets could be used to fight fires from the air.

Defence Minister Theo Francken of the N-VA made the military dimension explicit. “In wildfires, Defence must be able to intervene quickly and effectively when the fire brigade and civil protection can no longer cope,” he said.

The plan does not yet specify budget figures, timelines, or the precise division of responsibilities between federal, regional and military actors — details that officials said would follow.

The capacity gap at the heart of the debate

The Hoge Venen fire laid bare a longstanding criticism: Belgium invests heavily in defence — fighter jets, munitions — yet has no heavy firefighting aircraft of its own. During the blaze, only two small federal police helicopters fitted with “Bambi Buckets” and two Defence Airbus H145 helicopters were available, alongside foreign aid.

Two Dutch Chinook helicopters, capable of carrying around 7,600 litres of water per flight, and two Swedish firefighting planes drawn from the EU civil protection reserve were deployed, in addition to Belgian services.

As P-Magazine noted, the irony is hard to miss: private firefighting planes from the company Aquarius-Cargolux are regularly stationed at Zwartberg regional airport in Genk, but they are not Belgian-owned and were deployed elsewhere in Southern Europe at the time.

Francken acknowledged that Belgian material “does not suffice” and said he wants to present a Military Fire Action Plan to parliament. A previous project to adapt military aircraft for firefighting was shut down after a few years. Space for heavy transport helicopters such as Dutch Chinooks is foreseen in Belgian strategic planning only from 2033. Defence has ordered 15 Airbus H145 helicopters, the first of which has been delivered and which can be fitted with Bambi Buckets; the federal police operates two similar aircraft.

P-Magazine pointed out that Belgium has repeatedly faced the same analysis — at the Kalmthoutse Heide and at a military domain in Brecht in 2021 — without lasting capacity-building. “Then the fire goes out,” the outlet wrote. “And apparently so does the memory.”

Why Belgian landscapes are burning

This summer, the VRT NWS background analysis noted, it was mainly peatland rather than forest that burned. The subsoil of the Hoge Venen consists of dead plant matter accumulated over thousands of years. It was drained at scale from the late 18th century to plant conifers and supply timber to the steel and mining industry, drying out the upper peat layer and creating far more combustible material.

Wildfire counts in Belgium have risen sharply. The research group of Jan Baetens at Ghent University counted 345 wildfires in 2026 and 115 in 2025, against a normal average of about 62 per year. Across Europe, 634,000 hectares had burned by late summer — double the average, according to European figures cited by VRT NWS. The Belgian climate risk centre CERAC had warned in early 2025, and again after the Hoge Venen fire, that the country was not ready for the rising number of wildfires.

Regional action and expert recommendations

Responses are also advancing at regional level. Flanders earmarked €3.3 million in 2025 to strengthen its wildfire approach and is due to publish its first operational Flemish wildfire action plan this autumn, with roughly 160 possible measures on the table — including safer nature areas, more access roads, forest conversion, more fire patrols, new camera systems and greater cooperation.

Wallonia adopted a decree in mid-July 2026 to better protect its forests, focusing on monitoring and data collection, and wants better cross-regional and federal cooperation and improved warning systems.

Experts cited by VRT NWS called for re-wetting soils as the most obvious intervention, more mixed and climate-resilient forests, and the creation of a national wildfire expertise centre — analogous to the Superior Health Council — to centralise knowledge currently spread across 34 fire zones. Baetens noted that the Dutch government has earmarked €70 million for 2024–2029 for wildfire management and knowledge-building, including a national expertise centre.

What to watch

The approval of the action plan is a starting point rather than a conclusion. Several questions remain open: whether Belgium will acquire its own firefighting aircraft or heavy transport helicopters; how the federal plan will mesh with the forthcoming Flemish and Walloon measures; and what the judicial investigation into the fire’s cause concludes. The Liège prosecutor’s office is examining whether a piece of agricultural machinery — and mowing work commissioned by the Walloon government — may have started the blaze, a politically sensitive line of inquiry that Walloon Minister-President Adrien Dolimont has acknowledged was “perhaps not the smartest thing to do that day.”

For now, the government’s message is that anticipation must replace reaction. “We must anticipate instead of enduring,” Crucke said. Whether the plan translates that principle into capacity on the ground — and in the air — will be the measure of its success.