Symbolic imageHeat and record-low rivers start showing up in Europe's accounts
France's ecology minister put this summer's heat at up to €15bn; a British thinktank counted £4.4bn in lost output. Record-low rivers are hitting freight and power.
Ecology minister Monique Barbut gave the range at a drought crisis meeting on Wednesday, 12 August: from €10bn, or 0.3 to 0.5 points of GDP, against a growth forecast of 0.7 percent. Le Monde reports that the statistics office Insee denies being its source. Verdant, the thinktank behind the British figure, covers June and July and projects more than £25bn a year by 2030 on current trends.
Kaub falls to ten centimetres
The gauge at Kaub fell from 14 centimetres on Tuesday to 10 on Wednesday, and the shipping association BDB says vessels between St. Goar and Mainz can load at most 20 percent. Transport minister Steffen Bilger promised better waterways and low-water ships.
Hungary raises the Danube
Prime minister Péter Magyar said work on a sill in the Danube bed upstream of the Paks nuclear plant begins on Thursday. Paks, which supplies about a third of Hungary's electricity, runs at just over 10 percent of its 2,000 megawatt capacity.
Nurses collapsing on wards
The Royal College of Nursing says some nurses have collapsed in wards without air conditioning, as an amber heat warning returns to England on Thursday.
Other opinions
Serbia's Politika frames Hungary's Danube works purely as energy supply; Abu Dhabi's The National reads the low rivers as a data story.