As Europe faces increasingly severe climate impacts, including rising loss of life, economic damages and ecosystem harm, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change calls on the EU to urgently strengthen its policy framework for effective and coherent adaptation. Adaptation and mitigation must advance together: while rapid and sustained mitigation is indispensable to limit future warming, strengthening adaptation is crucial to prepare for unavoidable temperature increases and safeguard Europe’s strategic priorities. 

Global average temperatures have risen to around 1.4 °C above pre-industrial levels. With insufficient global progress on mitigation, exceeding the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 °C goal is increasingly likely. Europe is warming about twice as fast as the global average, with rising temperatures driving more frequent and severe climate hazards – including heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, flooding, sea-level rise and coastal erosion – and impacts felt across all regions of Europe.