Europe faces an estimated €70bn annual bill to adapt to climate change, but as deadly heatwaves and wildfires intensify across the continent, questions remain over who should pay.
The European Parliament approved €144.1m in aid to Spain, Romania and Cyprus this week to recover from wildfires, floods and heatwaves they faced in 2025, before debating upcoming heat disasters without concrete practical solutions on Wednesday (8 July).
As Europe buried over 1,300 excess deaths from its last heatwave at the end of June, the sole preventive measure the EU’s mostly empty parliament debate could agree on was enhancing firefighting preparedness.
“We must encourage more to become volunteers,” Belgian MEP for the European People’s Party (EPP) Pascal Arimont told colleagues in the final Strasbourg plenary scheduled before summer break, when the fastest warming continent on Earth will be getting much hotter.
In response, the EU commissioner for preparedness and crisis management Hadja Lahbib promised a toolkit to increase heatwave risk awareness and promote volunteering.
