The European Commission presented on Tuesday a new climate strategy aiming to better identify droughts, floods, wildfires and other effects of climate change and to manage the risks more effectively.
Climate resilience should be taken into account in all major EU policy areas in the future, the commission said.
"Europe is warming at double the global rate. To become truly climate resilient, we need to adjust and learn along the way," Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
"Today, we are presenting a European approach to climate risks, to anticipate, to prepare for and to manage. We are ensuring that climate resilience will be included in policies across the continent, supporting investment, innovation and long-term growth," she added.
A new Climate Resilience Act is intended to ensure that EU countries assess their climate risks and plan their preventive measures using the same basic assumptions.
The specific ways in which the member states protect themselves against heat, drought and flooding will largely remain up to the individual countries, depending on their risks and priorities.
A website entitled the European Climate Viewer will show potential hazards for specific locations and periods. For example, users should be able to identify railway routes that may be particularly exposed to high temperatures or heavy rainfall, allowing targeted protective measures to be planned.
Other platforms will help public authorities identify suitable, proven measures for addressing specific climate risks.
The aim of the initiative is to anticipate the effects of climate change and prevent damage through action at EU, national and local levels, the commission said.
According to the commission's estimates, economic losses caused by climate-related damage amounted to around 200 billion euros ($223 billion) between 2022 and 2025, or 50 billion euros per year.
In September, von der Leyen announced that the initiative would pursue a whole-of-society approach, down to the local level.
According to data from the EU Earth observation programme Copernicus, the past summer was the hottest on record for Western Europe.
Up to Sept. 2, the area of land that burned in wildfires in the EU was almost twice as large as the average for 2006 to 2025.
According to estimates by British scientists, heat killed around 50,000 people in European cities over the summer, more than ever before.
In Germany, some 16,000 people died as a result of heat, according to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), a government health agency.