Impact of plasma thermal transients on the design of the EU DEMO first wall protection

•A list of EU-DEMO relevant plasma transients has been put together, and will be used as a starting point for future investigations.•A strategy for the protection of the first wall is presented, including the use of sacrificial and divertor-like limiters, for off-normal, and nominal transients.•A preliminary thermal calculations of the effect of the transients on the different limiters and first wall is evaluated in this paper using the RACLETTE code, and 3D FEM methods•The proposed strategy allow to successfully protect the wall for all the considered transients.•Some requirements for a possible disruption mitigation system were derived for the protection of the FW due to the radiation loads, and will be further investigated in the future.