Government Creates CIPO — Portugal's New Unified Command to Prevent a Repeat of Last Summer's Wildfire Catastrophe

Portugal's government has created a new unified command structure to coordinate wildfire prevention across multiple ministries and agencies, in what officials describe as an extraordinary response to an extraordinary threat. The Comando Integrado de Prevenção e Operações — CIPO — was announced on April 8 in Leiria by three cabinet ministers, and brings together the country's military, civil protection, forestry, and firefighting bodies under a single operational umbrella. The message from Lisbon is clear: after the devastation of the 2024 fire season, the government is determined not to let it happen again.

What Is CIPO and Why Now?

CIPO is an interministerial coordination structure jointly established by Nuno Melo, the Minister of National Defence; Luís Neves, the Minister of Internal Administration; and José Manuel Fernandes, the Minister of Agriculture and Sea. The choice of Leiria as the launch venue was no accident — the central Portuguese district sits at the heart of the country's most fire-prone forest belt and was where the advanced civil protection command centre for the operation has been installed.

The immediate trigger is the vast quantity of combustible material left in Portugal's forests following a series of violent storms earlier in 2026. Fallen trees, broken branches, and uprooted vegetation have created what fire scientists call "fuel loading" — and with the fire season now approaching, the window to clear that material is narrowing fast. Ministers framed the situation in stark terms: an extraordinary accumulation of forest debris demands an extraordinary, coordinated response before the summer heat arrives.

Who Is Involved?

The list of entities operating under CIPO reads like a roll call of Portugal's entire civil defence and land management apparatus. It includes AGIF, the Agência para a Gestão Integrada de Fogos Rurais, which serves as the country's rural fire management agency; ICNF, the Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas, responsible for nature and forest conservation; the GNR, Portugal's Guarda Nacional Republicana, which polices rural areas and enforces land-clearing regulations; the Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses, representing the country's volunteer and professional firefighters; EMGFA, the Estado-Maior-General das Forças Armadas, the Armed Forces General Staff; and ANEPC, the Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil, the national emergency and civil protection authority.

That breadth is the point. Historically, wildfire prevention in Portugal has suffered from fragmented responsibilities — forestry authorities manage vegetation, municipalities enforce land clearing around homes, the military deploys during active emergencies, and civil protection coordinates the response. CIPO is designed to break down those silos before the fires start, not after.

The Mission: Clear the Forests Before They Burn

CIPO's operational mandate is focused squarely on prevention rather than suppression. Its core tasks include the removal of combustible material from high-risk areas, the cleaning of critical zones around settlements and infrastructure, the reopening of forest paths that have been blocked by storm debris, and the improvement of access routes that firefighters and emergency vehicles depend on when blazes do break out.

These are not glamorous tasks, but they are precisely the kind of unglamorous groundwork that fire experts have been calling for since long before the catastrophic fires of recent years. The presence of military resources under EMGFA suggests the government is prepared to deploy soldiers alongside forestry workers and firefighters to get the job done at a scale that civilian agencies alone cannot achieve in the limited time available.

A Country Shaped by Fire

For anyone who has lived in Portugal for more than a few years, the creation of CIPO carries the weight of painful recent history. In June 2017, wildfires swept through the Pedrógão Grande region — also in the district of Leiria — killing 66 people in a single catastrophic event that remains one of the deadliest wildfire disasters in modern European history. That same year, further fires in October claimed another 50 lives across central and northern Portugal. The disasters exposed systemic failures in land management, emergency communication, and interagency coordination, and triggered a wholesale restructuring of Portugal's civil protection system.

But the reforms did not prevent a return of large-scale destruction. The 2024 fire season was devastating, with fires burning through vast tracts of forest in central and northern Portugal over the summer months, destroying homes, displacing communities, and once again raising urgent questions about the country's preparedness. It is that 2024 season — combined with the storm damage from early 2026 — that provides the direct impetus for CIPO's creation.

What This Means for Residents and Expats

If you live in a rural or semi-rural area of Portugal — and many in the international community do, particularly in the Silver Coast, Algarve interior, and central regions around Coimbra and Castelo Branco — the creation of CIPO is directly relevant to your safety. The command structure should accelerate the clearing of forest debris near residential areas and improve access routes that are critical for evacuation.

It is also worth remembering that Portuguese law already requires property owners to maintain a 50-metre defensible space around buildings in rural areas by clearing scrub and cutting back trees. The GNR's involvement in CIPO suggests that enforcement of these obligations may intensify in the coming weeks. If you have not yet cleared your land, now is the time — both for legal compliance and personal safety.

More broadly, CIPO represents a shift in how Portugal approaches wildfire risk: moving from a reactive, suppression-focused model to one that prioritises prevention and interagency coordination before the fire season begins. Whether the new command structure translates into meaningful results on the ground will only become clear over the summer. But the political signal is unmistakable — three ministers standing together in Leiria, the symbolic heart of Portugal's wildfire country, announcing that this year will be different.

For residents across Portugal, the hope is that it will be.

Military units are already deployed in nine municipalities for wildfire prevention, but the Armed Forces remain nearly 7,500 troops below their legal target. Read about Portugal’s military staffing levels and the recruitment challenge →

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