It is not a future scenario. It is a balance sheet that can be summarized in three figures. In 2024, 62,000 people died in Europe from causes attributable to heat. Over the past decade, extreme heat alerts have averaged 4.3 per day-it was one per day in the 1990s. 99.6 percent of monitored European regions have experienced an increase in heat-related deaths over the past decade.
These are the findings of the newly released Lancet Countdown Europe Report 2026. The report-the work of 65 researchers from 46 academic institutions and the United Nations-was built on 43 indicators distributed across five thematic domains. It is a systematic measurement of what climate change is already producing on the health of Europeans: an accelerating health crisis.
Joacim Rocklöv, co-director of the Lancet Countdown Europe and professor at the University of Heidelberg, leaves no room for reassuring interpretations: “Rising temperatures, worsening indoor pollution, exposure to infectious diseases and growing threats to food security are putting millions of people at risk today, not in the distant future. The choices we make now will determine whether these impacts worsen rapidly or whether we begin to move toward a safer, more equitable and more resilient Europe.”
The problem is not just the extent of the damage. It is the speed with which it is growing, and the slowness of the policy response, which is totally inadequate.
Who pays the highest price
Heat does not affect everyone equally. The Lancet report documents this accurately: infants, the elderly, and outdoor workers are most susceptible to extreme heat. Low-income households are 10 percent more likely to experience food insecurity caused by extreme weather events. Those living in economically disadvantaged regions face higher risks of forest fires and have less access to green spaces. These are not side effects: they are structural data. Those who have fewer resources to protect themselves-an air conditioner, a well-insulated home, an indoor job-are those who suffer the most.
Along with the climate crisis, the aggression of viral diseases is worsening. The average risk of dengue outbreaks in Europe has nearly quadrupled since 1980-2010. Countries such as Italy and France-traditionally considered low risk-have seen a 32 percent increase in coastal areas susceptible to Vibrio infections between 2015 and 2024 compared to the 1980-2010 baseline period.
Growing problems for respiratory allergy sufferers as well: the pollen season has lengthened by a week or two since the 1990s. We are finding that the European health care system was designed for a climate that no longer exists.
The cost of fossil fuel dependence: 444 billion euros
The report devotes a specific section to the link between fossil fuels and economic vulnerability. To protect citizens from soaring energy prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European governments have provided subsidies of 444 billion euros in 2023 alone. That is 3.3 times the 2016 levels.
The math is merciless: every crisis in fossil markets produces a public bill that national budgets pay in the form of subsidies, and citizens in the form of inflation. And then the crisis returns, as it did with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the spring of 2026. Structural dependence on international hydrocarbon markets leaves no room for maneuver: prices are formed elsewhere, decisions are made elsewhere, and Europe is called upon to chase events.
Hannah Klauber, co-chair of the Lancet Countdown Europe’s working group on economics and finance, made this clear: “Today, as the conflict in Iran brings new uncertainty and suffering to people across the region, we are reminded again that as long as Europe is dependent on fossil fuels, our economies, our public budgets, and ultimately our health will remain vulnerable. Accelerating the transition to clean and safe energy is not just an environmental necessity, but a critical opportunity to safeguard people’s well-being.”
Political attention wanes as risks grow
Then there is another figure that is striking in its illogicality. As the climate crisis presented the bill that the report measures, in the European Parliament in 2024, only 21 speeches out of 4,477 referred to the intersection of climate change and health. Less than 0.5 percent of the parliamentary debate touched on the link between what we burn to power the energy system and how we are. In the same year, scientific research on climate and health declined for the first time, reversing an established trend of growth. The gap between what the data say and what policy discusses is not narrowing: it is widening.
Yet something is moving, and it is once again the separation of powers that provides hope for course correction. Health arguments are becoming increasingly central to climate litigation: more than half of the documents in court cases since 2011 refer to health. And in a development the report calls “historic,” the International Court of Justice has affirmed the legal obligation of states to act on climate change to protect human well-being. When politics retreats, the courts advance.
Three priorities
The report concludes by indicating three concrete priorities: strengthen health adaptation plans with stable, long-term funding, because plans without resources remain on paper; expand dedicated climate services to the health sector; and accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels. These are not new goals. They are goals that recent progress indicates are achievable. The question is whether European policy will be able to keep them at the center of the agenda at a time when pressures-economic, geopolitical, electoral-push in the opposite direction.
