June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded in Western Europe. Several thousand excess deaths were registered in the peak heatwave week alone, and the toll is still rising — alongside wildfires and crop losses across the continent.
And yet this is not a failure of planning. Most European countries have heat-health action plans and early warning systems. The EU adopted an Adaptation Strategy in 2021 and declared a climate emergency back in 2019.
We know the danger. Too little is happening.
The European Commission is now preparing the European Climate Resilience Framework, due for adoption at the end of 2026. It will decide whether this summer finally leads to binding obligations — or to another strategy without consequence.
That is why the Environmental Physiotherapy Association has joined the European Regional Hub of the Planetary Health Alliance and more than 80 organisations in the European Declaration on Heat and Health, calling on the EU to put health at the centre of its climate policy: with legally binding adaptation obligations, measurable health targets, and a European Heat-Health Action Plan with an emergency fund for hospitals, care homes, nurseries and schools.
Heat protection costs money. Not nearly as much as recurring extreme heat.
And we do not exempt ourselves. As a health sector, we must lead by example: with heat plans in our own institutions that protect patients and staff alike.
Read the full declaration: https://planetaryhealthalliance.org/european-declaration-on-heat-and-health
#EnviroPT #PlanetaryHealth #PublicHealth #HeatAndHealth #ClimateAndHealth #EuropeanDeclarationOnHeatAndHealth
Filip Maric (PT, PhD)
Associate Professor, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Filip Maric (PhD) is an Associate Professor in physiotherapy, healthcare innovation and sustainability, and Founder and Executive Chair of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association. He is particularly interested in developing environmental physiotherapy as a new theoretical lens and driver of transformative change in physiotherapy, healthcare, and beyond. Filip’s interests are grounded in a love for philosophy, the intersections of health, environment, and society, and sea kayaking.
