BRUSSELS – The positive role of the pilot program for pre-positioning firefighters and equipment from six countries in Greece in the summer of 2022, and the country’s role as an aid hub in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, was raised by European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic, it was reported on Monday.

The European official’s positive comments were conveyed to Athens-Macedonian News Agency during a presser granted to European news agencies of the European Newsroom in Brussels on May 25.

Asked about how the prepositioning program can help -following test runs in Greece last year- he said that the idea of prepositioning “was discussed for the first time when I visited Greece after the very bad season of fires in the summer of 2021, and it was Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis who mentioned it, and this was then taken up by Civil Protection Minister Christos Stylianidis.”

The feedback “we received from everyone, from the host country, Greece, as well as from these six countries (Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Romania and Norway) that contributed, was absolutely positive. That’s why we decided that for this year we will increase the pre-placements.”

(ANA-MPA/I. Zarkadoula)