Wants to provide the long-awaited cooling in France with air conditioning: Marine Le Pen.Image: keystone
Marine Le Pen wants to “air-condition” the entire country. The Greens are trapped.
June 24, 2026, 8:53 p.mJune 24, 2026, 8:53 p.m
France is suffering from the sweltering heat. In some places the thermometer is climbing to 45 degrees this week. In the wine city of Bordeaux on the Atlantic, for example, 44.6 degrees were measured.
The right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen is now taking advantage of this fact. On Wednesday she advocated a “climate control plan” that had already been launched earlier: the state should equip schools, hospitals and retirement homes with air conditioning and support homeowners with bonuses for installing such devices. It is “criminal” to build hospital rooms without cooling, said the head of the Rassemblement National (RN). “If I am elected president, I will implement a massive climate change plan.”
To cool or to suffer, that is the (political) question
The proposal is receiving the greatest possible response in the current heat wave. Hardly a quarter of residential buildings in France are cooled. Le Pen puts his finger on a sore spot. She accuses the Greens in particular of denigrating air conditioning as “right-wing” for ideological reasons. This is also because France, with its nuclear energy, has largely CO2-neutral electricity to operate air conditioning systems.
Green party leader Marine Tondelier countered that Le Pen’s entire climate program was limited to “buying air coolers.” These individual devices only increased the temperature of the neighbors by emitting hot air. Measures such as thermal insulation, green roofs, tree planting or painting the houses white would be better. But “of course” the Greens are not against cooling hospitals, schools and retirement homes, Tondelier added.
Such arguments are currently largely unheard. Le Pen cleverly refers to “bon sens”, common sense. Her MP Franck Allisio also said that cooling overheated rooms in the summer was no worse than heating them in the winter.
The left, on the other hand, has a difficult time. Its presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon initially condescendingly declared that Le Pen had “no idea”. With consideration for the less well-off electorate who cannot afford expensive air conditioning, he now let his right-hand man Manuel Bompard announce that his Indomitable Party is “neither for nor against” air conditioning.
Only individual media outlets are attacking the Lepenists’ climate plan head-on. The communist L’Humanité points out that Le Pen comes from the corner of climate skeptics. The reason why she is relaunching her cooling plan right now is not just due to the heat wave. In less than two weeks, a Paris appeals court will decide whether the RN founder can take part in the spring 2027 presidential elections despite her embezzlement scandal. With her move, she makes it clear to the judges that she remains at the center of the political debate. In any case, this is likely to be very heated. (schweiztoday.ch)
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