Published On 1/7/2026
European governments are still treating the increasing rise in temperatures as an emergency rather than a reality, while experts say that these governments must take serious steps to rehabilitate their infrastructure in line with climate change.
In France, for example, June 24, 2025, was not an ordinary day in the country’s history because it was its hottest day ever and it was said to be the hottest since data recording began, as temperatures in the city of Palio in western France reached 44 degrees Celsius.
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This heat wave does not stop at France, but it has affected the entire European continent, over which a heat mass expanded late last month, according to a report prepared by Abdullah Sukkar for Al Jazeera.
This mass began over the Iberian Peninsula and then pushed toward France, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, before its center gradually moved toward Central Europe and the Balkans.
It is not a passing wave
This was not a passing heat wave, but rather a new warning for a continent with the fastest rising temperatures in the world. The monitoring unit in the Al Jazeera Network has tracked temperatures in Europe over time and space based on data from the European Center for Weather Forecasting and the European Copernicus Center.
Tracking showed that temperatures increased in the French capital, Paris, by 16 degrees above normal, while they increased by 7 degrees in Barcelona, Spain, and in Lisbon they increased by more than 11 degrees.
As for the British capital, London, temperatures rose by more than 14 degrees, reaching 35 degrees Celsius.
Temperatures exceeded 35 degrees in the Belgian capital, Brussels, and the German capital, Berlin, and exceeded 36 degrees in Rome and Milan, Italy. In the Czech capital, Prague, and the Hungarian capital, Budapest, temperatures rose by more than 10 degrees above normal.
Scientifically, heat waves are defined as temperatures rising above their maximum levels for more than 3 consecutive days. They are not only measured at noon, but they become more dangerous as the temperature rises at night.
High temperatures at night mean that the body enters the next day without its temperature decreasing, which means pressure on the heart, lungs, and blood circulation, which increases the chances of death.
In France alone, health authorities announced that a thousand deaths had been recorded during the peak of the wave, most of them among the elderly, and the number is expected to rise as full data becomes available.
In other European cities, schools were closed, trains were disrupted, pressure on hospitals increased, and demand for water, electricity, and refrigeration increased.
Damage beyond health
The impact of heat waves does not stop only on human health, but extends to water resources, agriculture, and energy. The Pakse nuclear power plant in Hungary has reduced its production due to the high temperature of the Danube River, which it uses as a coolant.
In Italy, the level of the Po River dropped, allowing the water to extend 18 kilometers inland, raising concerns for agriculture and protected wetlands in the river delta.
Although European buildings are designed to confront the cold and then store heat, global warming and severe climate change, which is supposed to occur once every generation, are now occurring almost once every year.
The World Health Organization estimated deaths due to heat waves at about 489,000 deaths worldwide. In 2003, about 70,000 people died due to heat, while nearly 62,000 will die in 2022.
To confront this danger, the World Health Organization recommends avoiding going out during peak hours, staying away from direct exposure to the sun, drinking fluids constantly, and keeping the body cool, with emphasis on paying attention to the elderly, the sick, children, and outdoor workers.
What Europe is witnessing today is not just an exceptionally hot summer, but rather a scene from a rapidly approaching future, where heat waves are not a rare event, but rather a recurring test of the ability of cities and societies to adapt to a hotter world, which conferences and research have long warned about, and the number of agreements signed to reduce it.
Ignore the problem
However, Europe’s problem with these waves, according to Karim El-Guindy, director of the Carbon Institute for Energy and Climate Research, is that governments deal with them as an emergency phenomenon and place the responsibility on citizens to deal with them completely by drinking a lot of water or avoiding going out in the sun.
In fact – according to what Al-Jundi said in an interview with Al-Jazeera – the European government position does not deal with the root of the problem, which is the transfer of the climate of central Europe to its north, while the climate of the center turned into the climate of Mediterranean Europe, which in turn inherited the climate of North Africa and the Middle East.
What is worse is that the countries of Central Europe (France, Britain, Germany, Austria) are not ready for these major changes, as evidenced by the fact that death rates in France reached a thousand people during the last wave, a number that Al-Jundi says is not recorded in Kuwait and Ahvaz, where the temperature reaches 55 degrees annually.
Governments are not doing anything serious to confront this crisis and are not working to repair their infrastructure in line with climate change, as ventilation, shading, and cooling devices are very absent in European countries, says Al-Jundi.
Also, real readiness to deal with these large waves requires changing the entire railway structure because it is made of rails that can withstand certain temperatures, and therefore all train trips are canceled if the temperature increases further so that these rails do not bend.
At some airports, some of the runways melted due to the high temperature, which means that the issue requires diligent work to modernize the infrastructure to deal with the high temperature as a reality and not as an emergency crisis, as is the case now, according to Al-Jundi.
