EU heatwave plan promised after 30,000 deaths

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised a new EU heatwave plan on Wednesday after back-to-back summer heatwaves caused more than 30,000 excess deaths across Europe.

Speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, von der Leyen said Brussels would soon present a European Heatwave Plan to improve the bloc's response to extreme weather.

“There can be no repeat of this summer,” she told lawmakers in her annual State of the European Union address. She said the EU needed better early warning systems, stronger health preparedness, urban adaptation and cooling, and more support for the most vulnerable.

The heatwaves, fuelled by climate change, also caused widespread drought. More than 1,000 wildfires burned about 540,000 hectares of land across the EU since mid-June, more than twice the size of Luxembourg, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, particularly in Spain and France.

Temperature records were broken across the continent, and dangerous blazes also hit normally cooler and wetter areas including Belgium and Scotland.