Europe's Heatwave Shifts East. France Raises Alert to Maximum Level as Deaths Spread Beyond the Elderly.

Since our June 25 coverage reported at least 40 dead in France, the situation has deteriorated on multiple fronts, with new deaths, overwhelmed ICUs, and the heat system pushing into Central Europe.

France Activates Its Highest Health Emergency Tier

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced France's Orsan health emergency plan has moved to level three, according to BBC News. The stated goal: boost hospital staffing and protect vulnerable populations as the strain on the health system compounds.

Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said deaths linked to extreme temperatures are now being recorded among young people, not just the elderly. In Rennes, Professor Louis Soulas, head of the Accident and Emergency department, told BBC News that five or six people had been found dead in their homes after failing to answer welfare check phone calls. "It's not just the very elderly; it's people aged 60 and up," he said. His ICUs were "saturated."

Paris First Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire told French TV that mortality rates in the capital are rising. He specifically called out people jogging in the evening heat: "I saw 100 or so joggers on the street. Frankly, that's irresponsible."

A three-year-old child was found dead in a car in the Paris region, according to BBC News. That follows two young children found dead in a family vehicle in the southern town of Carpentras earlier in the week. Three French nuclear plants have also gone offline because of the heat.

The Heat Moves East

The worst conditions are shifting. Germany's western and southwestern regions could hit 40C on Thursday, June 26, with extreme heat spreading across the country by Friday. An extreme weather warning is now covering much of the Czech Republic, according to BBC News.

The UK's Met Office kept red extreme heat warnings in force through Thursday, with the provisional June record of 36.1C set Wednesday in Gosport, Hampshire potentially broken again. Temperatures of 37 to 38C were forecast for central southern England on Thursday. Train operators asked passengers to travel only if absolutely necessary.

Relief is coming, but not immediately. According to the Met Office via BBC News, the heatwave is expected to end for the entire UK by Sunday, with fresher air moving in from the west. East Anglia and southeast England could still see temperatures above 30C on Saturday, with amber warnings remaining in force.

70,000 Babies Living in Dangerously Hot Homes in England

Beyond the immediate death toll, the heatwave is exposing a structural problem in UK housing. Analysis of government data by the National Housing Federation (NHF) and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) estimates more than 70,000 babies in England, roughly one in six, are living in homes that get uncomfortably hot. About 1.59 million children overall are in the same situation.

NHS guidance recommends babies sleep in temperatures of 16 to 20C. Jackson Bylett, a resident of an eighth-floor new-build flat in Newham, east London, told BBC News that indoor temperatures in his flat topped 31C, with a five-month-old baby in the home. As a leaseholder, he cannot make external modifications to the building, which features floor-to-ceiling windows, even to reduce heat gain.

NHF Director of Policy Alistair Smythe put it plainly to BBC News: "The challenge used to be keeping heat in. Now it's about keeping heat out."

The strongest counterargument worth acknowledging: critics of climate-driven housing policy argue that retrofitting millions of existing homes is prohibitively expensive and that the UK's building codes have been gradually tightening on thermal performance. They have a point. New construction standards have improved. But the NHF data suggests those improvements are not reaching the existing stock fast enough, and leaseholder rules are actively blocking individual solutions in some cases. This is a property law problem.

F1 Also Caught in It

In a footnote to the broader crisis, the FIA declared the Austrian Grand Prix, scheduled for this weekend, a heat-hazard race, according to BBC News. It's the first such designation of the 2026 F1 season. The rule triggers when ambient temperatures are forecast to exceed 31C while cars are on track, allowing drivers to use cooling kits. Cockpit temperatures in an F1 car can exceed 40C under normal conditions.

The Open Question

UN climate chief Simon Stiell told BBC News that Europe's heatwave "has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it" and called for faster renewable adoption. Whether European governments translate that rhetoric into concrete building retrofit policy, or whether the housing stock problem gets revisited only during the next extreme summer, remains genuinely unresolved. The NHF is calling for changes to leaseholder rules as a starting point; no legislative timeline has been announced as of June 25.