After a summer marked by extreme weather, the political response to the climate crisis looks timid and falls short of French people's expectations, experts tell Euronews.
Huge wildfires in Gironde, in the Landes and in the Var. Repeated heatwaves across the country. A severe drought seriously affecting agriculture. This summer, France has been severely tested by the elements.
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Last winter, the country had already experienced several months marked by a series of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), triggering major flooding across mainland France.
With only a few months to go before the next presidential election, environmental issues are set to take an unprecedented place in the political debate. Historically championed by the left, the topic has become unavoidable, forcing the right and the far right to engage with it.
Because today, "given the delays and the seriousness of the situation, France no longer has a choice: it has to adapt, and quickly", warns the NGO Réseau Action Climat, which criticises the record of successive governments that, it says, "have not taken the necessary measures to adapt the country to the effects of climate change".
Yet warnings have been issued for several years. As early as 2013, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stated that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia".
"The years 1983 to 2012 probably constitute the warmest 30-year period the Northern Hemisphere has experienced in at least 1,400 years", the report also noted.
Politicians out of touch
A challenge that more and more citizens are taking on board. In a survey published on Monday 24 August (source in French), Ipsos reveals that 64% of French people felt "anxiety or fear" for the health of their loved ones and 48% for their own health during the summer of 2026.
The polling institute also indicates that the French "above all expect solutions to come from the public authorities": 79% of respondents want public measures to help people cope with heatwaves.
For its part, a study by ADEME published last year estimated that 6.3 million French people are moderately eco-anxious, showing initial symptoms that should not be allowed to worsen. "2.1 million are thought to be highly eco-anxious, with intense and chronic symptoms" and "420,000 of them have mental health that is genuinely at risk", the study (source in French) pointed out.
The problem is that they are not necessarily being heard by politicians. "Most parties and presidential candidates seem out of touch with the daily realities of French people who have been badly hit" by recent events, says Anne Bringault, programme director at Réseau Action Climat, speaking to Euronews.
"Faced with an unprecedented challenge for humanity and biodiversity, with the many deaths caused by heatwaves, the economic losses, especially for farmers, the homes destroyed by wildfires and nature dried to a crisp, the political response seems very timid and nowhere near matching the expectations of the French people or their perception of the tangible impacts of climate change", she says.
Appearing on France Inter (source in French) this Tuesday, Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder and president of the climate-transition think tank Shift Project, was even more scathing, arguing that the political class is "in a form of denial" when it comes to climate change.
Causes brushed aside
A view shared by Eva Morel, secretary-general of the association QuotaClimat. "You get the feeling that elections are moments when ecology really struggles to find a way through", she laments to Euronews, before trying to explain the reasons for this lack of interest. "In fact, they themselves are not encouraged to understand and propose ambitious ideas on this subject, because the media reception of their statements on climate is generally fairly favourable, whatever they say."
She goes further still. "Above all, we cannot hope for a constructive debate to take place on this topic if, when climate disasters occur, we talk only about the facts and do not try to understand what lies beneath – both the causes and the structural solutions that could address them", stresses Eva Morel.
She cites the events of summer 2026, which sparked discussions focused "mainly on the observations and not necessarily on explanations". "So, for example, we talked more about climate, which is more or less unavoidable. But we talked less about fossil energy", she regrets. "From that point, we can hardly expect the proposals of the various candidates to be convincing when it comes to tackling the root of the problem", the expert continues.
Politicians doing... politics
"Which of the candidates puts at the centre of their programme the fact that the world is going to change? None of them," snaps Jean-Marc Jancovici. According to him, the programmes of potential or declared candidates in the next presidential election are devoid of coherent environmental measures. "You find inconsistencies everywhere", says the president of Shift Project.
For Eva Morel, this situation is partly explained by how hard it is, in "a political system that rewards demagoguery, to ask candidates to tackle a crisis that profoundly unsettles citizens' lifestyles and still present a desirable project".
"Centre-right and right-wing parties stay in their lane, like Édouard Philippe, who chose to highlight immigration issues during" his trip to Mayotte "", says Anne Bringault. Eva Morel agrees: "But even on adaptation, the right as a political family still does not see it as a political issue."
As for the left, "electoral opportunism, in a context of competition to scoop up green voters, seems to play a significant role", adds Anne Bringault.
"What we see is that environmental programmes on the left are still more substantial than those on the right, and that has been the case for several years," continues Eva Morel. "What we find interesting is the extent to which political discourse mirrors scientific discourse. And today, that seems to be happening more on the left."
RN, king of disinformation
On the other side of the political spectrum, the Rassemblement National "is trying to hurriedly dress itself up in green, pushing simplistic solutions that are barely realistic financially or technically, such as widespread air-conditioning", analyses Anne Bringault.
"In reality, they focus on whatever is hot in the news. And since climate is now part of the hot news agenda, they focus on that. It is purely opportunistic," adds Eva Morel, who notes that RN has rowed back on its statements questioning the credibility of the IPCC or the reality of global warming, even if that "is not enough". "The problem is that their political thinking has not taken environmental issues on board at all. They have no proposals that genuinely protect us from the consequences, let alone tackle the causes."
She also accuses the party led by Jordan Bardella of spreading, in her view, misleading information. "These are narratives that are deliberately orchestrated because they work in public opinion, exploiting moments that attract a lot of attention. [...] It has been shown that this is an obstruction strategy that works. It obstructs the implementation of public policies that are meant to be effective", explains the expert, who cites low-emission zones as an example.
"And what we fear is that, alongside this obstruction, there is also a process of disqualifying political opponents and environmental defenders, essentially by demonising them. And by doing that, they push the solutions away from the problem, even though the problem is highly visible", concludes Eva Morel.
