A punishing heatwave that shattered temperature records across Europe last month has put a spotlight on a critical blind spot for a continent that has prided itself on its ambitious climate goals: being ready for the effects of global warming happening right now.
The European Union has long positioned itself as a global leader in fighting climate change, becoming one of the first major economies to enshrine a legally binding commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
But when temperatures soared past 40 degrees Celsius — that’s 104 degrees Fahrenheit — in parts of Europe this June, it became clear that businesses, public services, and essential infrastructure across the continent were woefully unprepared to handle the real-world consequences of a warming climate.
Poland’s Deputy Climate Minister Krzysztof Bolesta was blunt in his assessment. “We’ve not been good enough on adaptation,” he told Reuters, speaking as power outages hit parts of the region, outdoor labor was prohibited in some areas, train service was halted in Germany, and a cargo train in Sweden derailed after extreme heat warped the metal rails beneath it.
Spain was among the hardest-hit nations, reporting 1,000 excess deaths attributed to the record temperatures.
Responsibility for making buildings and public spaces more heat-resistant falls largely on individual nations and regional governments rather than the EU itself. EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who plans to unveil an EU-wide “climate resilience plan” later this year, explained the reasoning to journalists: “There’s no point in trying to say from Brussels how the Greeks or the Spaniards need to battle wildfires. They know that much better than we do as the Dutch know much better how to build dikes.” He said the EU plan would center on shared scenarios and best practices.
Nevertheless, the EU’s own financial commitment to adaptation has remained modest. Official data shows that between 2021 and 2025, nearly three-quarters — 72% — of climate-related spending from the EU’s shared budget went toward mitigation, meaning efforts to reduce the greenhouse gases driving warming. Only 18% was directed at adaptation, with 9% addressing both areas. This is despite Europe warming faster than any other continent on Earth.
The EU does have an array of financial tools designed to cut emissions, including renewable energy subsidies and its Emissions Trading System, which places a ceiling on how much companies can pollute and allows cleaner businesses to sell their unused pollution permits for a profit. But Poland’s Bolesta noted that no comparable financial incentives exist to push businesses toward investing in adaptation.
“It’s easier to see the business case for mitigation, because you have the cap-and-trade system, you have carbon credits, you have renewables companies,” he said. “Adaptation, it’s mostly regarded as a cost with very long-term benefits, so delayed gratification, but also sometimes just an insurance policy — it might or it might not kick in.”
The economic toll is becoming impossible to ignore. Dutch bank ING reported this week that climate-driven extremes such as heatwaves, drought, and flooding shaved 0.3 percentage points off Europe’s already sluggish economic output last year. “The uncomfortable truth is that heatwaves have quietly graduated from ‘weather event’ to ‘macro variable,’” ING wrote, adding: “The thermometer, it turns out, has become a leading indicator.”
The economic damage takes many forms — from lost tourism and farming income in southern countries to reduced worker productivity in office buildings not built for hot weather. Germany offers a striking example: official estimates put the cost of a single day above 30 degrees Celsius at €430 million — roughly $465 million — in lost productivity. Yet only about half of German office buildings have air conditioning, compared with 90 to 95 percent in southern Europe, according to the Federal Environment Agency.
“For decades, we built against cold and not against heat and that’s an adaptation gap,” said Geraldine Dany-Knedlik of the German Institute for Economic Research DIW.
Irene Seemann, who leads climate adaptation efforts for businesses in the large German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said attitudes are beginning to shift. “To use a football analogy, Germany has been one-nil down because heat has not been much of an issue,” she said. “Now companies see that it has a direct impact on their operations.”
Some solutions are surprisingly straightforward and affordable. A German flooring company called Project Floors, whose historic glass-domed headquarters in Cologne is protected by heritage laws that prevent structural changes, applied reflective film to its windows and cut indoor temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius. “It was simple, effective, and required no power,” said managing director Bernd Greve.
Other fixes demand deeper changes — rescheduling work shifts to cooler parts of the day, redesigning public transit systems, and rethinking how urban spaces are built and used.
Progress has been made since the devastating 2003 heatwave, when peer-reviewed research found approximately 70,000 excess deaths occurred across Europe over that summer. The World Health Organization estimated this week that heat-related deaths in Europe would have been around 80% higher today without the adaptation steps already taken — including heat-health action plans, early warning systems, cooling centers, and targeted outreach to vulnerable populations.
“They are saving lives right now,” said the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Henri P. Kluge. “We need more of them, across all of the European region.”
