{"id":28320,"date":"2026-07-11T07:39:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/28320\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T07:39:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:39:45","slug":"eu-commission-hq-forced-to-shut-down-air-conditioning-amid-heatwave-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/28320\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Commission HQ forced to shut down air-conditioning amid heatwave \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belgium and much of Europe have been sweltering for the past week, with record-breaking temperatures.<\/p>\n

The Commission issued guidance for its staff earlier this week, which included avoiding going outside at the hottest times of day, drinking water regularly and starting work earlier.<\/p>\n

But the advice angered some Commission staff who work in buildings without air-conditioning, including DG AGRI, according to internal communications<\/a> seen by POLITICO\u2019s Brussels Playbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like feudalism,\u201d a Commission official working on a lower level of the Berlaymont, granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO on Friday, referring to the fact that upper floors housing commissioners got to keep their AC on. A second official agreed it was a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third staffer working on the 8th floor told POLITICO on Friday that even with working AC, the temperature inside was still 25.7 degrees.<\/p>\n

The heat wave has prompted a renewed discussion<\/a> about the lack of air-conditioning systems in homes and offices across much of Europe. Only about one-fifth of households on the continent have AC. In Belgium, one-fifth of all trains are without AC, prompting the national rail company to cancel many peak-hour services.<\/p>\n

The European Parliament has also faced blackouts this week due to energy consumption from cranking up its cooling system.<\/p>\n

Gerardo Fortuna and Gabriel Gavin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgium and much of Europe have been sweltering for the past week, with record-breaking temperatures. The Commission issued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,18,2678,1403,217,473,300,5861],"class_list":["post-28320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-buildings","tag-climate-change","tag-communications","tag-services","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-water"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116900211303787564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}