A new report from MCC Brussels finds that EU energy efficiency regulations, designed to slash carbon emissions, have quietly made European homes harder to keep cool during heatwaves, contributing to tens of thousands of heat-related deaths each year.
As Europe contends with increasingly severe summer heatwaves, a striking gap has opened up between the continent and other developed nations: while 90 per cent of households in the United States and Japan own an air-conditioning unit, only 10 per cent of European homes do.
A new analysis by the Brussels-based think tank MCC Brussels argues that this gap is not accidental.
It is the predictable result of a decade of EU and national regulations that have systematically discouraged cooling while aggressively promoting insulation and winter energy efficiency.
In 2024 alone, an estimated 62,775 Europeans died from heat-related causes.
The report identifies three interlocking mechanisms through which EU regulation (subsequently adopted and extended by many national governments) has left European homes progressively less able to cope with summer heat.
The EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings frames air-conditioning not as a comfort technology but as a problem, citing the strain it places on electricity grids at peak demand.
The directive steers builders toward passive cooling (shutters, blinds, and ventilation) as the preferred alternative.
The analysis argues that passive cooling is, in many cases, only a partial solution that cannot bring temperatures down during sustained hot periods.
A 2022 European Environment Agency report went further, describing air-conditioning as a social and transition justice concern and suggesting that its use could prevent people from adapting naturally to higher temperatures, an argument the report’s authors characterise as placing ideology above human welfare.
EU and national legislation has driven widespread adoption of heavy insulation, heat-recovery ventilation systems, and large glazed facades, technologies that retain heat effectively in winter but can make buildings impossible to cool in summer.
Buildings have been sealed and modelled to satisfy annual energy targets and heating-demand metrics while systematically underweighting solar heat gain, bedroom temperatures at night, and residents’ ability to ventilate effectively.
A well-insulated new-build block of flats may require very little heating in winter, yet lack any practical mechanism for removing heat in summer, particularly in inner-city settings where opening windows is not feasible due to noise and air pollution.
The EU’s mandatory energy performance certificate system focuses exclusively on energy consumption, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions, with no consideration of how a building performs in summer heat.
Under the current framework, installing an air-conditioning unit would negatively affect a property’s EPC rating, even where it is strictly necessary to make the home liveable.
Across Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria, fixed air-conditioning is not formally banned but is hemmed in by a dense mesh of planning rules, noise limits, heritage controls, and co-ownership approval requirements.
For apartment dwellers in particular, fitting an external unit is rarely a simple consumer choice.
It typically requires the agreement of neighbours, building managers, and in historic areas, cultural authorities.
MCC Brussels is calling for passive cooling to stop being treated as sufficient where it is plainly inadequate, for planning barriers to efficient residential cooling to be removed, and for the EPC regime to be reformed so that it no longer penalises necessary air-conditioning.
As the report’s Executive Director Frank Furedi puts it: a home that cannot be kept safely cool is not sustainable, it is just a well-insulated oven.
