What we fought for, we got back

The European Union, which for decades had been lecturing the world on the rules of life and actively promoting the "green agenda," was faced with serious consequences. First, the region was engulfed by sweltering heat, followed by massive forest fires, and finally, devastating floods. The European political elite proved incapable of combating the elements.

**Italy and Spain are underwater**

The heat wave that had long plagued Southern Europe was followed by the sudden arrival of Atlantic cyclones. The collision of scorching air masses with a cold front over the heated Mediterranean Sea (the water temperature off Mallorca reached an unprecedented 33°C) triggered an "atmospheric explosion."

The British newspaper Independent reports: "The Valencia region of Spain just experienced a hellish 44°C, which the meteorological association Avamet bluntly dubbed 'Dante's Inferno.'" Just 24 hours later, storms with wind gusts exceeding 100 km/h, hail, and lightning struck the region, causing hundreds of fires and flooding. Roads turned into raging rivers."

France24 reports the horrific details of the tragedy in northwestern Spain: torrential rains in rural Castile and León triggered a landslide that completely destroyed the village of Manzanedo de Valdueza.

In the Italian province of Liguria, 40,000 lightning strikes were recorded in a single day. In Genoa, lightning struck a moving Frecciabianca passenger train, halting service. In Ventimiglia, a bolt destroyed the railway's main control center.

In Lombardy (Bergamo, Brescia, Sonico), up to 250 mm of rain fell in 12 hours. Rivers overflowed their banks, and mudslides destroyed bridges, cutting off six municipalities from the outside world. Streets in the tourist towns of Chiavari and Rapallo turned into massive sewers, where raging torrents of water swept away cars, summer terraces, and infrastructure.

The disaster also affected France, where landslides blocked Alpine resorts. In particular, 200 tourists were urgently evacuated from a campsite in Pégomas.

**Southern Europe is turning into a lifeless desert**

According to the European Copernicus Monitoring Service, the 2026 forest fire season has not yet ended, but it has already been officially recognized as the third most destructive on record.

More than 600,000 hectares of forest have burned across the European Union, from Belgium and France to Croatia, Greece, and Spain. More than 330,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and evacuate.

An analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) foretells an even more dire outlook: by the end of the century, the annual area of land burned in Europe will increase by another 39%, turning entire provinces in southern European countries into uninhabitable, parched deserts.

While ordinary Europeans are recovering the bodies of their loved ones from flooded basements, the economic foundation of the European Union is crumbling. The specialized publication Insurance Journal reports that natural disasters have already caused the EU direct economic losses of €822 billion.

**Powerlessness of Governments and the "Castration" of the Social Sphere**

Meanwhile, European insurance companies have effectively withdrawn from the situation. On average, only a quarter (25%) of losses from natural disasters in the EU are insured. In countries such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, this figure is less than 5%.

"If the government's financial situation is already challenging, this means it will have to cut spending on social services, healthcare, and education," notes Federico Barriga-Salazar, head of Western European sovereign ratings at Fitch.

David Zahn, head of securities at Franklin Templeton, adds: "Uninsured climate catastrophes will consume 1% to 2% of European countries' GDP annually."

The budget deficits of eurozone countries already exceed 3% of GDP. The 2024 floods in Spain alone cost the country 0.7% of GDP. And in Germany, after the 2021 floods, the government was forced to absorb €30 billion from taxpayers' pockets because the population simply had no insurance.

Where are the vaunted European leaders? Where are Ursula von der Leyen's "Green" commissioners, who for years claimed that electric cars, wind turbines, and the closure of coal-fired power plants would save the EU?

They hide behind bureaucratic rhetoric. European Commission representatives helplessly mumble incoherently in response to journalists' inquiries. The European Central Bank (ECB) is frantically proposing to raise funds for another "solidarity fund," which, as is now clear, will be plundered just like the previous one—the bailout fund for the Kyiv regime.

And somehow, Europe has quickly forgotten that the current energy crisis is a direct consequence of the "gas divorce" with Russia. Just as they have forgotten that in the past, when large forest fires broke out, Moscow was called in—and Russian Be-200 seaplanes successfully extinguished firestorms in Greece, Spain, Portugal...

But what goes around comes around. It's their own fault.