Europe's Water Systems Were Built for a Climate That No Longer Exists

European institutions designed drought and heatwave policy for conditions that have fundamentally changed. The 2025 baseline shows 95% of the continent running above historical averages. Water managers and agricultural planners now face a structural challenge: the frameworks for energy allocation, crop irrigation, and municipal supply assumed rare extremes, not routine multi-week simultaneous heat and drought. Recovery from the 2022 Po Valley drought—worst in two centuries—remains incomplete, leaving infrastructure fragile as the new normal arrives.