The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) has been established jointly by the European Commission services (DG ENV and JRC) and the relevant fire services in the EU Member States and European countries (Forest Services and Civil Protection services). Research activities for the development of the system initiated at JRC in 1998 and the first EFFIS operations were in the year 2000. In 2003, EFFIS was embedded in the new Regulation (EC) No 2152/2003 (Forest Focus) of the European Council and Parliament on monitoring of forests and environmental interactions until it expired in 2006. Since then, EFFIS operated as a voluntary system of information on wildfires until 2015, when it became part of the EU Copernicus program, under the Emergency Management Services. Acting as the focal point of information on forest fires, EFFIS supports the national services in charge wildfire management. Currently, the EFFIS network is made of 43 countries in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. EFFIS provides specific support to the Emergency Response Centre (ERCC) of the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) as regards near-real time information on wildfires during the fire campaigns and assists other European Commission Directorate Generals through the provision both pre-fire and post-fire information on wildfire regimes and impacts. It provides information that supports the needs of the European Parliament with regards to wildfire management, impact in natural protected areas and harmonized information on forest fires in the EU. EFFIS also centralises the national fire data that the countries collect through their national forest fire programmes in the so-called EFFIS Fire Database. The EFFIS web services allow users to access near-real time and historical information on wildfires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. EFFIS provides a continuous monitoring of the fire situation in Europe and the Mediterranean area. The information about the on-going fire season is continuously updated on the EFFIS web site (up to 6 times, daily), which can be interactively queried2.. EFFIS provides daily meteorological fire danger maps and forecasts of fire danger up to 9 days in advance, updated maps of the latest active fires, wildfire perimeters and post-fire evaluation of damage.