‘A sense of dread’: Europe’s first climate migrants live in constant fear of extreme weather

If there is one thing etched in Vaios Giatropoulos’s memory from the worst night of his life, it is the helplessness in his son’s eyes. “Now what, dad? We’ve lost everything,” he had asked him tearfully.

They were standing on the roof of their semi-truck for nine hours as floodwaters rose dangerously close to their feet before they were rescued. Storm Daniel, which struck central Greece in September 2023, devastated their hometown of Palamas, leaving behind a chaotic mix of mud, debris, dead cattle, and shattered lives.

Eventually, Giatropoulos moved with his family to a village where their home is on higher ground. Returning is unthinkable. “I don’t want to feel that sense of dread with every drop of rain. For several months, we feared it would flood again. I even thought about seeing a psychologist,” he recalls.

However, he considers his family fortunate because they found a new home nearby quickly. Many Palamas residents, he says, were forced to relocate to nearby cities, to Athens, or even abroad in search of a better life and drier land.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans have been displaced by extreme weather

Giotopoulos belongs to a steadily expanding group of Europeans: the continent’s first climate migrants. Displacement within national borders is no longer an academic issue, as more people are affected by storms, floods, wildfires and droughts.

The Geneva-based NGO Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates that approximately 413,000 people were displaced in the EU between 2008 and 2023. So far, 2023 has been the worst year on record, with over 200,000 Europeans internally displaced, mostly due to wildfires and storms.

However, for those affected, the experience varies greatly from one country to another.

Germany faces devastating wildfires and floods

In Germany, the type of extreme weather people are most worried about depends on the region.

In the northeast, an increasing tendency toward drought has made wildfires more common and severe. Last year was Germany's worst wildfire year on record in terms of hectares burned. While most people in this region need not fear a wildfire coming for their home, some farmers have already begun to feel the effects of diminishing rainfall.

Meanwhile, in much of southern and western Germany, the most immediate danger comes not from too little water but from too much at once.

The IDMC recorded 84,000 internal displacements in Germany from 2008 to 2024. The vast majority of these (78,000) were caused by flooding.

The devastating Ahr Valley floods in 2021 represent one of Germany's most impactful natural disasters in recent history, killing 134 people and affecting roughly 40,000 more.

Martin von Langenthal, who was involved in the disaster response as deputy head of the EU Civil Protection and Resource Management Unit for the Red Cross, estimates that 3,500 people were at least temporarily displaced by that event, with homes requiring serious repair or rebuilding.

Beyond the immediate physical destruction, survivors faced long-term resource shortages, living with damaged infrastructure including washed out bridges and wastewater facilities, and a severe lack of essential medical care, doctors and prescription drugs.

“There were a lot of people who could live in their houses again pretty soon, but there was a large group who couldn't live in their houses anymore because they were completely gone or too damaged to enter,” Langenthal says. “And for those people, container homes and sort-of refugee homes were created initially for short-term housing, but the containers were still being used more than two years later.”

A flood-stricken Greek village torn in two

Due to its Mediterranean location, Greece is particularly vulnerable to climate-related disasters. The IDMC estimates that nearly 300,000 Greeks have been displaced since 2008, most due to wildfires, storms and floods.

An example is the village of Vlochos in Thessaly, central Greece. Situated at the lowest point in the region, the village has long been prone to flooding. Older residents still remember with trepidation the floods of 1953 and 1994 when parts of the village were ruined.

But when Storm Daniel struck in 2023, the scale of the destruction was unprecedented. In many homes, water levels rose as high as two metres, leaving them uninhabitable with all furniture destroyed.

In the first weeks following the storm, a sense of togetherness prevailed. Younger residents helped older ones, and families shared whatever resources they had, recalls Vassilis Kalogiannis, the village’s president, with a bittersweet mix of pride and melancholy.

Yet that unity soon eroded, as the scale of the disaster made it clear that relocating the community to higher ground might be the best way to prevent future disasters. The government has offered such an option, provided it is accepted by a clear majority of the village’s residents.

'Where should we go? This is our home'

In the nearby village of Metamorphosis, around 95 per cent of households voted for relocation in a referendum, partly because the village had recently flooded several times.

“Most people are eager to go, they saw the water reaching their roofs. When there’s rainfall many people leave even if there is no real danger,” says Petros Kontogiannis, president of Metamorphosis.

Things are different just a few kilometres away in Vlochos where people are divided – a harsh reality that many communities across Europe are likely to face as climate change wreaks havoc.

The debate has become hostile, sometimes escalating into serious arguments and even physical altercations. “Everyone has gone mad after the storm. It’s a form of collective PTSD,” says a village resident who wishes to remain anonymous.

Many residents have moved to other villages or cities, yet still call Vlochos home and want the village to move to a more flood-resistant location. “Our village is in the wrong location. It’s at the lowest spot in Thessaly, so since 1953 it has been repeatedly at risk,” says Panagiotis Panagiotopolos, a local who now lives in a nearby town. “The decision for Metamorphosis is to relocate although it’s two metres higher than Vlochos,” he adds.

Not everyone is convinced relocation is the answer, however. “Where should we go? This is our home,” says Apostolos Markis, a former police officer who wants the village to remain where it is.

Northern France under water

Vincent Maquignon, 54, will never see his mother’s face again. The last photos he had of her were swept away by torrents of mud that flooded his home. On 2 January 2024, the father of two boys had only a few hours to salvage what he could from his home, including administrative documents and a few personal belongings hurriedly taken with him.

He had lived for 23 years in this house in Blendecques, northern France. “This house embodied our family’s journey: first steps, first tears,” he painfully recalls. “We had to leave everything behind in an eye-blink. There was 1.4 metres of water on the ground floor.”

It wasn’t the first time his town had flooded. Yet every year, conditions worsened. Its classification as a high-risk flood zone made selling his house nearly impossible. “We were trapped,” he recalls.

That wintry day marked the departure of nearly 800 people from Blendecques.

“We are France’s first climate-displaced people. My family and I moved to a house on higher ground in a neighbouring town. It took us over a year to feel safe again, but as soon as it rains, people get anxious,” Vincent explains.

While northern France is facing increasingly severe flooding, the South is burning, the coastline is eroding and Alpine glaciers are melting. Across the country, most municipalities face at least one major natural risk.

Nearly a quarter of France’s population say they would consider moving because of climate risks in their municipality, according to a recent Odoxa survey. In 2022, around 45,000 people were displaced due to environmental disasters, making France one of the countries most affected by climate change in Europe. The focus is now shifting from whether people will move to the scale of displacement.

A continent on the move

If some of the worst-case scenarios outlined by climate scientists materialise, by 2050 Europe is expected to be 2.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, meaning that the South will face longer droughts and more frequent extreme heatwaves, while central and western Europe will experience heavier rainfall and higher risk of flooding.

Like Giatropoulos in Greece and Maquignon in France, millions will have to move within their countries in search of employment and better access to public services, or simply a safer environment to live in.

“In the coming years, we will have more and more internal climate migrants,” says Pavlos Baltas, a demographer at Greece’s National Centre for Social Research. “If people cannot live in one place, they will move.”