EU Commission Faces Backlash for 'Feudal' Air Conditioning Policy During Heatwave

The EU Commission’s headquarters in Brussels shut down air conditioning on its lower floors during a record-breaking heatwave, while the offices of President Ursula von der Leyen and other top officials kept their cooling intact, Politico reported on Friday, citing employees and internal alerts. The perceived double standards enraged some of the personnel, who described it as Eurocratic ‘feudalism’. The Berlaymont building’s roughly 3,000 employees received an urgent midday text on Friday warning that “due to extreme weather conditions,” the cooling system on floors one through seven would be switched off “for the rest of the day,” the outlet reported. However, the shutoff zone did not apply to floors eight through 13, where top officials, including most of the 26 commissioners and von der Leyen herself, work. “It’s like feudalism,” one unnamed Commission official working on a lower floor told Politico. A second official called the situation “a disgrace,” while a third staffer on the eighth floor said that even where cooling still worked, indoor temperatures held at 25.7C (78.3F). The shutdown came as Belgium endured its hottest day in 50 years, with Brussels hitting 34.6C on Thursday, breaking a record set in 1976. Forecasters warned that temperatures could climb toward 40C in parts of the country as the heatwave gripped much of Western Europe. Von der Leyen’s leadership has been dogged by scandals for years, though the media spotlight has mostly focused not on trivia, but on high-stakes controversies such as Pfizergate, when a EU court found that the EU Commission president had failed to justify withholding text messages exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during COVID-19 vaccine negotiations worth billions of euros. As for lesser controversies, in 2021 von der Leyen – who has long argued for a green economy and net zero emissions – received flak over reports that she had used private jets for 18 of her 34 official trips since taking office, including a 50 km hop between Vienna and Bratislava. In 2022, a wolf killed von der Leyen’s favorite pony Dolly at her family’s property in Lower Saxony. Several months later, in what was widely viewed as “revenge,” von der Leyen pushed to downgrade the EU’s protection status for wolves. Conservation groups said the move was driven by “personal reasons” rather than science, while voicing concerns that it could create a precedent for eroding the protection of endangered species.