This summer, an unprecedented extreme heatwave swept across Europe.
Under the pressure of intense heat, residents rushed to buy air conditioners, with units becoming “almost impossible to find” in many places. High temperatures also placed severe stress on European infrastructure. In France, power systems struggled under the load; in Germany, tram services in Leipzig were suspended after rails were “scorched” by the heat; and in Switzerland, a nuclear power station had to shut down a reactor temporarily because water temperatures had risen too high.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated on social media that, since June 21, Europe had recorded more than 1,300 heat-related excess deaths.
The heatwave has acted like a revealing mirror. What it has exposed is not merely the weakness of infrastructure, but a broader deterioration in European states' capacity to respond to sudden public emergencies amid the interaction of deindustrialisation, inflation, unemployment, and fiscal stress.
(I)
For a long period, Europe followed an industrial logic of “keeping high-end activities at home while relocating basic manufacturing abroad”, shifting low-end assembly and flexible innovative capacity to external locations.
According to data from the International Monetary Fund, the EU-27's share of global manufacturing fell from 27.43% in 1980 to 13.99% in 2025, nearly halving over forty-five years. Manufacturing as a share of EU GDP declined from almost 30% in the 1980s to 14.3% in 2024.
Once supply chains had been fragmented, Europe's former capacity to manufacture mass-consumption industrial goods was no longer intact. Europe now appears unable to produce enough air conditioners to meet public demand, or at least unable to mount a rapid and effective supply-side response.
Since 2012, the EU has sought to promote “reindustrialisation”, but the accumulated structural problems have proved difficult to reverse. After the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, Europe lost access to cheap natural gas, and the sharp rise in energy costs again dealt a heavy blow to traditional manufacturing. Owing to large funding gaps and uneven internal resource allocation, the EU has also struggled to form a unified industrial policy, especially in the field of new energy. Member states have largely acted on their own.
Data released by the International Energy Agency show that, in the first half of 2025, electricity costs for energy-intensive industries in the EU were more than twice those faced by comparable industries in the United States. This vast gap in energy costs has caused Europe to lose almost all competitive advantage in energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals, steel, aluminium, glass, and ceramics. Many firms have reduced output or relocated, and the speed of industrial-chain rupture has far exceeded expectations.
(II)
As manufacturing has continued to decline, large numbers of jobs have disappeared, producing serious social tensions and sharper class divisions. The contraction of manufacturing capacity has also pushed inflation higher and eroded households' real purchasing power. This is the economic root of why many Europeans feel they “cannot afford air conditioners” and “cannot afford to run them”.
Although the European Central Bank has adopted an aggressive tightening policy, interest-rate increases alone cannot fundamentally solve inflation when shortages of energy and raw materials originate on the supply side. The result has been a vicious cycle of “supply contraction, price increases, weak demand, and livelihood hardship”. Europe has thus been drawn into a stagflationary predicament, while ordinary citizens have become extremely vulnerable in the face of natural disasters.
Rising unemployment and persistently high inflation have further generated widespread social discontent and weakened public-governance capacity. France is a telling example. From the nationwide unrest triggered by pension reform to the Yellow Vest movement intensified by energy-price pressures, issues such as migration, public security, and fiscal austerity have continued to pull society apart. The heatwave has become a “catalyst” through which long-standing contradictions have erupted in concentrated form.
(III)
The EU's distorted environmental policies have, to some extent, also constrained Europe's room for policy manoeuvre.
Europe has long tended to “look upward” on climate issues: carbon markets, emissions-reduction targets, and green standards have been repeatedly tightened, while Europe has enthusiastically exported rules and led the agenda. Yet it has paid far less attention to “reaching downward” towards basic livelihood protection. Urban cooling systems and heat-adaptation facilities have never entered the priority list. In addition, some radical environmentalists have long treated air conditioning as a major “culprit” in worsening climate change, and new building regulations have deliberately excluded air-conditioning systems.
Policies that are badly out of step with the current realities of climate change have now collided with reality. Many hospitals, care homes, and ageing residential buildings lack even the most basic cooling conditions. Meanwhile, local building codes, public-facility planning, and management systems remain anchored in an era of mild climate that has already become history.
(IV)
After enduring sustained high temperatures, European countries that historically did not rely heavily on air conditioning now face a choice: whether to embrace air conditioning on a broad scale, or to continue resisting it while searching for alternative solutions.
Under crisis conditions, one political spectacle after another has unfolded. Left-wing parties and environmentalists generally oppose installing air conditioners on the grounds that they would “damage the environment”, while right-wing parties argue that “it is absurd to say high temperatures can cause death” and call for the widespread adoption of air conditioning.
The various political forces accuse one another, yet none has offered a substantive solution with fiscal feasibility and industrial support. The EU leadership has attempted to avoid the dispute and has refused to take a position in the “air-conditioning debate”. This war of words does nothing to ease the current public-health disaster. Instead, it further undermines social consensus and places additional strain on an already fragile system of public governance.
This phenomenon has puzzled observers around the world: why have Europeans become locked in bitter arguments over the installation of air conditioning? The question points to a deeper issue: are political positions and interests more important, or are life, safety, and health more important?
Overall, if Europe cannot achieve substantive breakthroughs in energy independence, fiscal integration, and pragmatic industrial policy, and if it cannot advance global climate governance and the new-energy industry on a genuinely people-centred basis, then what Europe faces may not be merely a few difficult summers, but a prolonged winter in global competition.
Wang Siyu, Assistant Research Professor, Shanghai Academy of Global Governance & Area Studies, Shanghai International Studies University
Translated by Lin Minghong
