France's Macron pledges to step up fight against climate change as he visits wildfires

The shift in climate is leading to more wildfires and will force France and the European Union to take "structural decisions", President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.

"Great fires are accelerating," he said, citing climate change as cause for them.

"(They) will impose us to take structural decisions in... the years to come," he added on a visit to the wine-growing Gironde region which saw its biggest wildfires in over 30 years, where roughly 20,000 hectares of forests were affected.