France is once again facing a heatwave test. Recently, temperatures in Paris reached 40.9 degrees Celsius, setting a new local record high for June; Pissos in southwestern France recorded 44.3 degrees Celsius at one point, making it one of the highest temperatures ever recorded in France. The impact of the heat quickly spread to the operation of society: more than a thousand schools were closed or had their class schedules adjusted; tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre shortened their opening hours; some areas restricted outdoor activities and drinking in public places; and the power system came under pressure from residents’ demand for cooling and limited cooling capacity at nuclear power plants. Facing the heatwave predicament, French schools, the power grid, and agriculture were all hit at the same time. How to effectively respond to climate issues has obviously become a stress test of France’s social governance capacity.
It is not the first time France has been troubled by summer heat. In the summer of 2003, a heatwave in France reportedly caused more than 14,000 deaths, a large number of them elderly people living alone and vulnerable people in care institutions. The lack of means at both the government and social levels to cope with high temperatures was widely criticized. After that disaster, France established a heatwave early warning mechanism, a registration and assistance system for the elderly, and public health emergency arrangements. In 2025, France released the third edition of its National Climate Change Adaptation Plan, proposing 52 measures and about 200 actions, and using the possibility that mainland France could warm by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 as a policy reference. It was from that year that summer “heatwaves” became a political topic in French society, and the focus of discussion gradually extended from public health disasters caused by high temperatures to systematic responses at the social level and the government-promoted social assistance system.
This heatwave completely closed more than 800 schools in many parts of France, and education authorities adopted a “circuit breaker” mechanism to respond to heatwave risks. Because some old school buildings have poor insulation, insufficient ventilation systems, and inadequate shading and cooling facilities, temporary closures became the simplest solution. However, French public opinion did not buy such measures. Le Monde once published an editorial saying, “This is just another temporary, passive response; the government lacks long-term planning and concrete implementation plans.”
The problems exposed in the power system and agriculture are equally acute. France’s electricity has long depended on nuclear power, which accounts for about 70 percent, once regarded as an advantage of France’s energy system in terms of stability and low carbon. But when heatwaves arrive, rising river water temperatures limit the cooling capacity of nuclear plants, and some nuclear units have to reduce operating power or even suspend operation. During this heatwave, France’s nuclear power generation at one point fell by about 4.1 gigawatts, equivalent to about 7 percent of the country’s total electricity demand; meanwhile, France’s electricity exports fell significantly, and European electricity prices were pushed up. Brittany and the Loire region in western France are important poultry-producing areas. This heatwave caused a large number of poultry deaths and also affected dairy farming. Rising breeding costs for farmers in turn affected urban meat supply prices.
Social division and partisan disputes expanded the scope of the heatwave’s impact. France’s air-conditioning penetration rate has long been lower than that of countries such as the United States and Japan, and building renovation in historic cities such as Paris is constrained by property rights, heritage protection, and community rules. The elderly, people with chronic diseases, low-income families, immigrant groups, and outdoor workers often find it harder to buy cooling equipment and harder to avoid high-temperature work environments. Differences in social class and risk tolerance have spread social antagonism. At the same time, the French political world has not formed a joint force around the heatwave issue; instead, partisan debate over “whether air conditioning should be installed” has become the focus. The French far right has portrayed air conditioning as a practical tool to protect ordinary people, hospitals, and schools, and criticized environmentalists for “ignoring people’s livelihoods”; the left and the Greens emphasize that air conditioning increases energy consumption and intensifies the urban heat island effect. With the two sides locked in dispute, the discussion around public policy is turning into political alignment.
Behind this debate is the deepening social division in France in recent years. From the nationwide large-scale riots triggered by pension reform to the Yellow Vests movement intensified by energy prices, issues such as immigration, security, and fiscal austerity have continuously torn at French society and pushed solutions further away. The heatwave is merely a “catalyst” for the concentrated outbreak of these long-standing contradictions.
To emerge from its “heatwave predicament,” France will have to confront the failure of its governance capacity and the dysfunction of its governance methods, rather than engage in a war of words over “whether to install air conditioning.” From a broader perspective, concepts such as “de-risking,” “economic security,” and “technological sovereignty” are also limiting the possibility for France to solve problems through normal international cooperation, including cooperation with China, of course. Addressing high temperatures requires power grid renovation, energy storage, photovoltaics, heat pumps, electric vehicles, and energy-saving building materials. If France and Europe, while acknowledging their own shortcomings in adapting to climate change, use “de-risking” and “protectionism” to exclude external cooperation with scale and cost advantages, what will ultimately be damaged is their own social resilience. Heatwaves will not cool down because of ideological debate. The real question it leaves for France is: does this European power have the ability to let go of ideological obsessions, abandon closed and exclusionary thinking, and use pragmatic governance and open cooperation to consolidate the livelihood baseline of climate security.
Author: Hu Chunchun, Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Institute for European Studies, Shanghai International Studies University
June 26, Global Times
Translated by Zhao Yiming
