Why Is Europe So Ill-Equipped to Handle Heat Waves?

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Why Is Europe So Ill-Equipped to Handle Heat Waves?

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Jun 25, 2026 6:20 PM CUT

Bed sheets hang outside of houses windows to protect the inside from the heat in Utrecht, on June 25, 2026 during a heat wave.

Bed sheets hang outside of houses windows to protect the inside from the heat in Utrecht, on June 25, 2026 during a heat wave.Jeroen Jumelet—Getty Images

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Jun 25, 2026 6:20 PM CUT

A record heat wave has millions sweltering this week all across Europe. France experienced its hottest day ever on Wednesday with temperatures topping 43.3°C (110°F) in parts of the country. Britain recorded its highest temperature ever for June, 38.8°C (101.8°F), in southern England, while Spain saw its highest daily average temperature 28.08°C (82.5°F) in June since 1950.

Once extreme heat is becoming the new normal. The heat waves across the continent have been super charged by climate change. Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world—it's the fastest warming continent in the world and the second fastest region after the Arctic. While southern Europe has always seen heat waves, much of Europe and the U.K. has historically had a cooler climate—and its infrastructure was built in that context. Combined with the rapid warming, this has left countries underprepared for the unprecedented and multiple heat waves being experienced each summer—and it’s placing people’s lives at risk.

Over the last four years, more than 200,000 have died in the E.U. at the hand of extreme heat—and many of the deaths were preventable. “In some sense Europe is facing the brunt of the overall global warming much faster than the rest of the world,” says Malcolm Mistry, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose research focuses on environmental epidemiology.

Read more: New Study Finds Air Conditioners Will Exacerbate Climate Change As Planet Warms

In many European countries, homes and buildings are old—and designed for a very different climate. In some countries, like England and France, homes “act as a furnace,” says Mistry, designed to trap heat.

“It’s designed to solve a very opposite problem,” says Ronita Bardhan, professor of sustainable built environment and health, at the University of Cambridge, adding that updating old housing stock won’t be easy. “The housing stock is predominantly already built, so it's a very different situation [from] where you have a green field to build new.”

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Old buildings were not designed to include cooling, and the region’s once-mild climate meant there was no need for A.C. “Most European cities historically had needed little cooling, so building design guidelines never anticipated integrating cooling systems,” says Bardhan.

Today, only about 20% of European homes have air conditioning, according to data from the International Energy Agency, compared to 90% of American homes. However, some countries have been quicker to adopt it than others. Nearly 50% of Italians now have A.C. in their homes, while 7% of homes in Britain are equipped with air conditioning, double the rate from just three years ago.

Read more: Air-Conditioning Is Rare in the U.K. Could Heat Waves Change That?

Yet even as the continent continues to face rising temperatures, it's unlikely to become widespread—especially as the E.U. looks to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a polluting cooling agent commonly found in A.C. units, by 2050. “If you think of the E.U. as a bloc, they're quite mindful of policies that can have a negative...