Three firefighters have died tackling blazes on Crete and in the south of the Greek mainland, the Greek fire department said, as the summer's fourth heatwave makes fires harder to quell and raises the risk of stabilised areas reigniting. In Spain, interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska called the country's largest recorded wildfire, west of Madrid, "technically stabilised", while prime minister Pedro Sanchez said the next twelve hours would be decisive; it was the first time in Spanish history that a fire had been raised to "operational level 3", putting the national government in charge of the response. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Romania and Greece are extending their missions and Poland joins from Saturday, after the EU sent France seven aircraft and four helicopters from countries as far away as Sweden and Turkey.
Italy has reserved 14.9 billion euros under the EU's SAFE loan programme but has still not signed the loan agreement. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday that Rome would request the full amount, then retracted: the 14.9 billion is only a ceiling, how much is actually drawn will be decided at the end of the year and will probably be less, six to nine billion. Seventeen member states have finalised their loans and the Commission's defence spokesperson Thomas Regnier says there is no time to lose; while Rome delays, the roughly 10 billion euros that could be freed cannot be reallocated to countries such as Poland and Lithuania, which asked for more than they were granted.
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Euronews · Wednesday, 29 July 2026
BMW has begun a voluntary redundancy programme agreed with its works council that could cover as many as 8,000 jobs in administration and development in Germany, according to reports; production is excluded. The company points to the technological transformation of the industry, geopolitical uncertainty, changing market conditions and developments in China, where domestic manufacturers have taken over the electric-vehicle market and launched a price war in what used to be a lucrative export market for European brands. The move follows Volkswagen's plan to shed up to 100,000 of its 650,000 staff and Porsche's total of 9,000 redundancies by 2035.
