Europe, the fastest-warming continent: accelerating climate action with young people
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly
debate on 1 October 2026 (34th sitting) (see Doc. 16493, report
of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development,
rapporteur: Ms Aurora Floridia). Text adopted by the Assembly on
1 October 2026 (34th sitting).See also Recommendation 2316 (2026). Provisional
version subject to editorial review.
1. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established that human activities, principally
through emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), have unequivocally
caused global warming. Since its first assessment report in 1990,
the IPCC’s conclusions on this causal link have become increasingly confident.
By adopting the Paris Agreement in 2015, States committed themselves
to keeping the increase in the global average temperature below
2°C and to pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels. In 2023, the IPCC established that this threshold was expected
to be reached as early as the beginning of the 2030s, even under
scenarios involving substantial reductions in emissions, and that
warming could reach 3.2°C by 2100 if the current trajectory were
maintained. Yet in the face of this clear prognosis, GHG emissions continue
to rise.. On 2 September 2026, the United Nations Environment Programme
announced that warming would not be halted before reaching 1.5°C
and that the overshoot of 1.5°C would henceforth have to be managed.
2. The Parliamentary Assembly asserts that this overshoot must
not be treated as insignificant: 3°C is not simply a worsening of
the climate, but a shift towards a world marked by extreme heatwaves,
massive pressures on water, food, insurance, infrastructure, etc.
Nor can it be interpreted as rendering obsolete the commitments
made under the Paris Agreement. On the contrary, it requires the
right economic, social and democratic questions to be asked, and
emissions to be reduced immediately in order to limit the scale
and duration of the overshoot. Present action must not be deferred
by relying on the uncertain promise that the carbon emitted today
could be removed from the atmosphere tomorrow. A possible return
below the 1.5°C threshold can neither erase the damage caused while
that threshold was exceeded nor serve as a climate policy.
3. The summer of 2026 confirmed it: Europe is experiencing the
effects of global warming more intensely than other continents.
The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Earth
observation programme – Copernicus – report that over the past thirty
years, the continent has warmed by around 0.56°C per decade, more
than twice as fast as the global average, and its temperature is
already around 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The summer of
2026 was the third hottest ever recorded in Europe and the hottest
on record in Western Europe, with an average temperature 2.54°C
above the 1991–2020 average, compared with 1.34°C higher in 2022
and 1.54°C higher in 2024. By the end of July 2026, half of the
European Union and United Kingdom was affected by drought; Europe’s
four major rivers – the Loire, Po, Rhine and Danube – had reached
exceptionally low levels, and more than 500 000 hectares of land
had been burnt in wildfires by August 2026.
4. The Assembly joins its voice to that of the scientific community
in warning member States: the climate change is destroying the conditions
in which all forms of life, including humans, can thrive, and thus
poses a direct threat to the planet’s habitability. The Assembly
calls for the concept of habitability to be placed front and centre
in European climate action, as a non-negotiable value on which all
others must rest. For the habitability of the planet is the primary
condition for life and thus the starting point and the heart of
all other human rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human
Rights (ETS No. 5) and the European Social Charter (revised) (ETS
No. 163). Without a liveable climate, accessible water, clean air,
and working ecosystems, human rights and the freedoms and dignity
they rely on are merely abstract concepts.
5. Climate change kills. It undermines livelihoods and exacerbates
vulnerabilities and inequalities. The 2026 Lancet Countdown report
puts the number of heat-related deaths in Europe in 2024 at 62 000
and notes an increase in such deaths in 99.6% of the regions monitored.
Between 2015 and 2024, heatwave exposure among infants and elderly
persons increased by 121% and 266% respectively compared with the
period 1991–2000. This is compounded by the fact that, in all member
States, the adverse effects on health and living conditions caused
by climate change are concentrated among those least able to protect
themselves.
6. The negative economic impacts attributable to climate change
in the member States are now visible and quantifiable. In the European
Union, extreme weather events have caused losses totalling 822 billion
euros since 1980, including €208 billion over the period 2021-2024
alone. These figures do not include productivity losses, healthcare
expenditure and other indirect costs. According to the European
Climate Risk Assessment, annual losses could reach 2.2% of GDP by
the year 2070 and a quarter of EU regions could experience GDP losses
greater than 5%, even if global warming is limited to +1.5°C. Warming
of around 4°C could reduce global GDP by 10–23% by 2100, compared
with a scenario in which no further warming occurs.
7. Young people are uniquely vulnerable here: they have contributed
little to cumulated emissions yet will suffer the consequences throughout
their lives. Among them, girls and young women may be particularly vulnerable
when climate change deepens existing inequalities: it can undermine
their access to education, resources and healthcare, including sexual
and reproductive healthcare, and increase their exposure to violence.
This injustice also extends across generations. A child born in
2020 will be 80 years old in 2100: for them, the end of the century
is not an abstract horizon, but an entire lifetime. According to
the IPCC, they will experience a near five-fold increase in extreme
weather events under a 3°C global warming scenario. This vulnerability
is not only a future concern: in Europe, approximately 43% of schools
are located in urban heat islands, where the average temperature
is at least 2°C higher than in the surrounding areas. Young people
will have to cope with the impacts on their health, livelihoods
and personal development, while also funding adaptation measures
and attempting to repair the damage that delayed action will have
exacerbated.
8. Yet Europe does have a genuine capacity for action. Recent
studies estimate that, even if other regions of the world were not
to step up their efforts, reducing European emissions would cost
less than the damage to our continent that inaction would entail.
Insufficient global action is therefore no justification for a European wait-and-see
approach. The decisions taken today will have a very tangible impact
on the quality of life on the continent for the remainder of the
lives of young people today and the generations to come. Intergenerational equity
demands that those who currently hold the power to decide and act
in our European countries do not pass on the burden of risks, damage
and reparations to their children.
9. The Assembly is convinced that young people’s creativity,
dynamism, social engagement and skills must be mobilised to address
climate change. This does not mean tokenistic consultations without
any genuine follow-up. Young people should participate in setting
priorities and making trade-offs, including choices concerning the
economic, tax and financial frameworks that shape incentives and
investment decisions. In particular, they should be involved in
defining the criteria governing public support, so that such support
ceases to favour activities harmful to the climate and ecosystems
and instead encourages low-emission and resource-efficient models,
the circular economy, biodiversity protection and sustainable entrepreneurial
initiatives led by young people.
10. In its Resolution 2553 (2024) “Strengthening the youth perspective
in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly” reaffirmed in Resolution 2639
(2026) “Strengthening democracies with young people: from participation
to shared responsibility” the Assembly committed to integrate a
youth perspective into the follow-up to its work. Youth involvement
in its work on the environment and climate crisis is essential.
11. The Assembly underlines moreover the importance of the Maastricht
Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations, which provide
a useful framework for addressing the long-term effects of public
decisions, the representation of future generations and intergenerational
equity in climate action.
12. The Assembly welcomes the adoption of Recommendation CM/Rec(2024)6
of the Committee of Ministers to member States on young people and
climate action, the first international instrument specifically dedicated
to this issue. It invites member States to implement it fully and
without delay. In order to make it an effective lever for accelerating
climate action, it calls on them in particular to:
12.1 enshrine in their laws and climate
plans ambitious overall and intermediate targets that are compatible
with human rights and accompanied by deadlines, monitoring, corrective
measures and an assessment of their effects on young people and
future generations, in order to ensure an equitable distribution
of efforts between generations;
12.2 establish permanent mechanisms enabling young people in
all their diversity, while ensuring in particular the effective
participation of girls and young women, to contribute to the formulation,
arbitration and monitoring of climate policies, including their
economic, tax and financial dimensions, with a clear mandate, sufficient
resources and an obligation for the authorities to respond publicly
to their proposals;
12.3 include youth delegates, with appropriate status, training
and resources, in national delegations participating in European
and international climate negotiations, and to report publicly on
their contribution;
12.4 establish, at national, regional and local levels, participatory
budgets and multi-annual funds enabling young people and youth organisations
to design, select and implement projects for mitigation, adaptation
and nature restoration, while ensuring that small organisations
and informal groups have access to this funding;
12.5 equip all young people with the knowledge and skills they
need to understand climate choices, counter misinformation and greenwashing,
and take part in collective action, through schooling, vocational
training, higher education, non-formal learning and youth work,
as well as through equitable access to reliable and accessible information,
while ensuring that curricula, textbooks, teaching resources and
information materials provide scientifically accurate, up-to-date
information tailored to young people’s ages and needs;
12.6 develop paid pathways to quality jobs in sectors essential
for reducing GHG emissions and for society’s adaptation to the effects
of climate change, and to ensure that climate policies do not exacerbate
precarity among young people, particularly in terms of access to
housing, energy, food and mobility;
12.7 prevent and address the effects of climate change on young
people’s physical and mental health, particularly eco-anxiety, through
accessible and tailored services, while strengthening their capacity
to take collective action;
12.8 prevent the discrimination that young people face related
to climate change, to pay special attention to young people who
are vulnerable or marginalised, especially those exposed to multiple
and overlapping forms of discrimination, and to ensure that climate
policies are based on the principles of climate justice, fairness,
and intergenerational solidarity;
12.9 ensure protection of young environmental defenders against
threats, excessive surveillance, strategic lawsuits against public
participation (SLAPPs), disproportionate use of force and any undue restriction
of their freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association;
12.10 provide local and regional authorities with the necessary
powers and resources to work with young people to develop local
mitigation and adaptation policies, and to make schools, universities, youth
centres and other essential services resilient to climate risks.
13. The Assembly calls on national parliaments to carry out an
annual review of the implementation of climate commitments. This
review should take the form of a public debate involving young people
in all their diversity, during which the government would report
on the gap between the targets set and the results achieved, the
public and private funding mobilised and the corrective action proposed.
14. Lastly, the Assembly calls on those member States which have
not yet done so to recognise at national level the right to a healthy
environment and to support, within the Council of Europe, the drafting
of a legally binding instrument guaranteeing this right as a standalone
one, with particular regard to the rights of young people and future
generations.
