Europe is the fastest-warming continent in the world. Recent climate-related disasters - including wildfires in Southern Europe and floods in Italy, Spain, and across Eastern Europe - have underlined the urgency of stronger adaptation policies. The cost of inaction is already immense: over the past decade, extreme weather events have caused average annual economic losses of €26 billion.
In response, the European Commission has announced a new framework for European climate resilience and risk management (Q4, 2026) and launched recently a Water Resilience Strategy: two important steps, but ones that must be anchored in effective multilevel governance.
In this context, continuous dialogue between the European Parliament, and local and regional authorities across the EU is essential. The experience of EU territories on the ground in preventing, adapting to, and responding to climate-related disasters provides indispensable insights for policymaking and is key to ensuring that the new European climate resilience and risk management initiative is fully adapted to the needs of EU local and regional communities.
A coherent, well-financed, and inclusive EU resilience framework is critical. Strengthened collaboration between the European Parliament and the Committee of the Regions in this field will help empower local and regional authorities, citizens and local businesses ensure no territory is left behind and enable Europe to build resilience in the face of accelerating climate risks.
The ENVI-ENVE meeting is in this respect a concrete step to join efforts in order to identify means of action in the common climate adaptation and resilience challenge.