Katharina Dröge went after the chancellor on Monday morning. “Friedrich Merz may be able to ignore the heat from the air-conditioned Chancellery, but the nursing staff in hospitals cannot,” the Green Party’s parliamentary group leader told public broadcaster ARD.
Germany had just come through a weekend of record temperatures. The mercury hit a record 41.7 degrees Celsius in the east of the country on Sunday. Hospitals and care homes reported health problems, motorways were damaged and trains were disrupted.
At care homes in Dormagen and Krefeld, in North Rhine-Westphalia, staff moved numerous residents out of overheated parts of the buildings on Saturday because of health problems. The German Life Saving Association said at least 26 people, all men and boys, drowned while swimming over the weekend. On Monday the German Weather Service declared June 2026 the second-warmest June since records began.
Opposition demands air conditioning
Dröge said the elderly in care homes are suffering because there is no air conditioning. She called for it to be installed at once in hospitals, care homes, nurseries and schools. In the Sunday edition of Bild she proposed subsidies for solar-powered units, arguing that in summer solar panels produce extremely cheap electricity. She also wants more trees and bushes in cities, and said a single tree can replace several air-conditioning units.
“We have to adapt to this,” she said of the heatwaves. “If we don’t take action on climate protection now, in 20 years we’ll look back on these summers as being cold.”
Sören Pellmann, parliamentary leader of The Left, said local authorities should not have to carry the cost of heat protection alone.
Who pays
The federal government pointed on Monday to the responsibility of state and local authorities. Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, a Social Democrat, told Deutschlandfunk that Berlin made €100 billion ($114 billion) available to states and municipalities from the special infrastructure fund at the start of this legislative term. “I think that is sufficient and adequate to finance all of this and to carry out this task,” he said, including for solar-powered air conditioning in public buildings.
He is working on federal co-financing for coming years as part of the budget process. His priorities are breaking up sealed surfaces in cities, planting trees and providing drinking fountains.
The Federal Health Ministry cited a heat protection plan and a €29 billion fund. “We are doing what we can and what we are permitted to do, but we cannot change the federal structure,” a spokeswoman said.
Eugen Brysch, a board member of the German Patient Protection Foundation, wants more. Spending of €30 billion on heat protection for hospitals and care facilities would have to start nationwide by next year at the latest, he said, with solar-powered air conditioning as an effective fix. “Instead of passing the buck to each other, the federal government, states and local authorities must now act together,” Brysch said. He argued Berlin should pay in full, since municipalities, hospitals and care facilities lack the money. The German Hospital Association also called existing funds insufficient and said hospitals should expect more heat-related patients.
World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Sunday that European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for such extreme temperatures. He said more than 1,300 excess deaths linked to high temperatures had been recorded in Europe since June 21.
