By: Mélodie Tran Thuan
The summer of 2026 is not over yet, but temperatures have already broken records in several parts of Europe, reminding us once again that climate change is now forcing us to rethink the way we live and who gets to define what is an “European challenge”.
In France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland, temperatures exceeding 40°C have reignited a debate that had remained largely taboo in their society until now: should air conditioning (AC) become widespread?The media quickly seized on the issue. Some, such as the British newspaper The Guardian, have described it as an emerging ”culture war”, while others have framed it as an “ideological war” in Europe, opposing adaptation to climate change and calls for greater restraint. Has AC become a public health necessity, or is it a symbol of our collective failure to address climate change? Is it a comfort that Europe should learn to live without?
But can we really speak of an “ideological war in Europe,” or is this an exaggeration? In Podgorica, where I am currently completing my internship, this so-called debate – supposedly concerning Europe as a whole – simply does not exist. In the Balkans, as well as in other Mediterranean regions and parts of the Iberian Peninsula, AC has long been an ordinary infrastructure for adapting to heat, much like heating systems are during winter.
In Montenegro, a country accustomed to hot and dry summers, AC is present in all public spaces: libraries, offices, shops and schools. This does not mean that the country has found a perfect solution to climate change, nor that the widespread use of air conditioning comes without environmental costs. However, it is considered one of the tools that can make extreme heat more bearable, alongside other forms of adaptation.
That being said, several media outlets – French, British, German and even Canadian, among others – have presented this debate over AC as a new “European” challenge. This reflects an ethnocentric perspective, suggesting that air conditioning has only recently become a European moral dilemma because Western Europe has begun experiencing more frequent heatwaves in recent years.
Beyond the climate issue itself, this media reporting revealed an outdated use of the word “Europe” in the western part of the continent – one that nevertheless lingers. Its meaning varies depending on the subject being discussed, particularly in geopolitical news coverage. My observation is when a problem affects France, Germany, the United Kingdom or another Western European country, it is quickly elevated into a “European” challenge. Western European experiences then tend to be conflated with those of the entire continent.
The AC debate is only one example of this broader tendency. It raises this question: whose experiences are considered representative of Europe, and whose remain perceived as regional exceptions? Across the continent, many states have complex relationships with national unity, regional identities and autonomy movements. Yet when debates about ethnic identities occur in the Balkans, they are often more quickly interpreted through the lens of instability, largely because of the region’s recent history of violent conflict.
Furthermore, if the European Union truly aims to build a political community based on exchange, knowledge-sharing and mutual respect, it cannot continue to regard Western Europe as the implicit reference point from which the rest of the continent is observed. The civil society from Western Europe must develop a more critical perspective on itself and become more aware of the uniqueness of its own experience. It would benefit from reconsidering the way it understands the continent, particularly this persistent tendency to mistake its own trajectory for that of “Europe” as a whole.
Even when many people consider themselves open-minded, it remains difficult to completely escape a worldview shaped primarily by one’s own experiences. This perspective often appears subtly in public discourse and is frequently amplified by mass media. The debate surrounding air conditioning is a recent example.
Finally, it may be tempting to believe that this is merely a legacy of the past, an outdated concept destined to gradually disappear in an increasingly interconnected world. Unfortunately, reality suggests otherwise: this perception of Western European superiority remains relevant today and appears in far more aspects of everyday life than one might initially expect.
The author is a master’s student in Central European Studies at Sorbonne University in Paris and an international intern at the Centre for Civic Education (CCE).