French Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou, together with eight representatives of employer and worker organisations — including CGT leader Sophie Binet — travelled to Madrid, Spain on September 9 and 10, 2026 to study how Spain handles extreme heat at work. The delegation was received by Spanish Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz and visited a construction site run by rail operator Adif near Atocha station. The visit followed a heatwave that hit France for more than a week this summer and, according to health forecasts, killed at least a thousand people; union CGT estimates around twenty heat-related worker deaths in France this summer. “France is becoming Spain,” Farandou told Spanish media, referring to rising temperatures.
Spain: mandatory adjustment triggered by weather alerts
Since May 2023 (Royal Decree-Law 4/2023), Spain has had a rule that kicks in automatically once the national meteorological agency AEMET issues an orange or red warning for extreme heat — a threshold that varies by region, typically around 37 to 40 degrees Celsius for orange. Employers must then adjust working hours or temporarily ban certain tasks. Since late 2024, following the deadly floods in the Valencia region, workers can also take up to four days of paid “climate leave” if travelling to work is impossible or dangerous, or in cases of serious and imminent danger — a provision the Spanish Ministry of Labour also considers applicable to extreme heat, though this is not laid down in a separate heat-specific rule. Prevention officers — a power that has existed since 1995 but now explicitly covers weather conditions following recent legal changes — can vote by majority to halt work. Many Spanish companies also operate on a “jornada intensiva” in summer: starting early and finishing in the early afternoon, without a long midday break.
France: a new decree, but no hard temperature limit
As of July 1, 2025, France introduced its own decree (décret 2025-482), requiring employers to consider and apply eight categories of measures whenever Météo-France issues a heat warning, ranging from adjusted working hours and shade to at least three litres of cool drinking water per worker per day. Unlike Spain, however, France has no statutory maximum temperature for indoor work, and no automatic right to shortened working hours. Only construction workers gain access to the existing bad-weather compensation scheme once an orange or red warning is issued. Failure to comply with the prevention duty can constitute an “inexcusable fault” on the employer’s part, resulting in increased liability.
For EHS professionals, this is relevant because France says it prefers social dialogue over legislation, while working toward new rules before the summer of 2027 — even as union CGT is already pushing for a statutory maximum temperature modelled on Spain. It is also notable that Spain, despite its extensive legal framework, officially recorded only 25 heat-related occupational deaths between 2016 and 2025 — a figure unions and experts consider implausibly low, partly because enforcement lags in sectors such as delivery, logistics and hospitality: union UGT filed a complaint this summer against delivery platform Glovo over exposing cyclist couriers to temperatures of up to 45 degrees.
Source: Prévention de la chaleur au travail : l’Espagne fait-elle de l’ombre à la France ?, actuEL-HSE, September 9, 2026, https://actuel-hse.fr/content/prevention-de-la-chaleur-au-travail-lespagne-fait-elle-de-lombre-la-france-1
Additional research for this article: Infobae and L’Info Durable (Madrid visit and Minister Farandou’s remarks), Légifrance (décret no. 2025-482), Spain’s official gazette BOE (RD-ley 4/2023 and RD-ley 8/2024), INSST and union UGT (Spanish regulation, enforcement and the Glovo complaint).
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