The EU will work further on fire statistics!

A big THANK YOU to Seán Kelly MEP and all other Members of the European Parliament who secured a Preparatory Action on fire statistics, as follow-up of the EUFirestat pilot project.

There is a lack of EU statistics on fire safety of buildings. While around 5000 people die from fires in the EU, and many more are marked for the rest of their life by the consequences of fires, we don’t have good statistics.

The issue was raised by the sector since decades because data is the starting point for better fire prevention and better policies. Little progress had been made until the European Parliament adopted in 2018 a pilot project aiming to mend the data gaps on fire statistics. A pilot project is a special amendment added to the EU budget on request of the Parliament. The initiative was led by MEP Bendt Bendtsen, with the support of MEPs from all political groups.

To implement the proposal, DG GROW granted in 2020 the EUFireStat project to a consortium composed of Efectis, NFPA, DBI - The Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology, The University of Edinburgh, Lund University, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, vfdb e.V., European Fire Safety Alliance, CFPA-Europe : Confederation of Fire Protection Associations Europe ( cfpa-e) and the Centre for Fire Statistics of CTIF.

The final report of EUFireStat was published in October 2022 and proposed a common terminology and method to collect the necessary data. The outcome has been widely welcomed. 19 EU countries have expressed a willingness to cooperate on a next step to test the implementation of the methodology. But this next step had to be organised.

Together with our partners, we went back to the European Parliament and suggested a “preparatory action” proposal.
👉 A preparatory action is also an amendment added to the EU budget, as a follow-up to a pilot project and to prepare a potential regulatory action. Our proposal was to test the implementation of the EUFirestat methodology and prepare its potential adoption as part of the EU statistical framework. Seán Kelly MEP took the lead of the initiative, with the cross party support of many colleagues such as Carlos Zorrinho, Ciarán Cuffe, Marisa Matias, Maria Da Graça Carvalho, Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, Morten Helveg Petersen, Tsvetelina Penkova and Jan Olbrycht.

And now is the good news : the proposal is part of the adopted EU budget! It means that the Commission will implement it in the coming years and effectively organise a test phase of EUFireStat.

This will allow to progress one of the 10 objectives of the EU Fire Safety Strategy we are calling for with 17 other organisations in our #KeepEUFireSafe manifesto.

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