Shoppers stampeded, doors buckled, and fights broke out across France this week over a $208 air conditioner.
The chaos began July 2 after discount retailer Lidl put roughly 200,000 fans and portable air conditioners on sale nationwide, some priced as low as 179 euros ($208). Crowds began forming outside stores before dawn, and by the time doors opened, several locations descended into shoving matches.
In Nanterre, just west of Paris, the entrance of one Lidl store was damaged as more than 100 people pushed to get inside, and outside a Paris store in the 19th arrondissement, about 200 people lined up for up to two hours before opening.
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Lidl acknowledged the incidents in a statement carried by AFP, saying its staff “had to manage tensions, in a sometimes difficult climate.” The company blamed the shortage on its ordering cycle, noting that stock is scheduled a year in advance and arrives on a fixed weekly timetable regardless of demand spikes.
The scramble has since spilled onto resale platforms including Vinted, where units bought for 179 euros have been relisted for as much as 700 euros, prompting a French lawmaker to file a fraud complaint against the retailer.
The panic buying followed the most extreme heat event in French recorded history. In late June, Météo-France’s national thermal indicator, an average drawn from 30 weather stations, hit an all-time high of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 2019 and then breaking it again the next day.
Individual readings climbed higher still, with Bordeaux hitting 41.8 C (107.2 F), Poitiers breaking a record dating to 1947 at 41.2 C (106.2 F), and Pissos, in the southwest, reaching a scorching 44.3 C (111.7 F), according to weather data compiled by NPR.
Santé publique France, the country’s national public health agency, reported roughly 1,000 excess deaths tied to the late-June heatwave, with about 85% of those among people 65 and older. At least 40 people drowned nationwide while trying to cool off in unsupervised waterways, a toll Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called a “tragic scourge” when he addressed the nation after a crisis meeting. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre cut visiting hours, and more than half the country’s departments were placed under red heat alerts.
Only about 24% of French households have air conditioning, far below rates in hotter-climate countries, leaving much of the population reliant on fans as temperatures repeatedly broke records set in 2003 and 2019. With another heatwave forecast, the political fallout has already begun.
Green Party lawmakers filed a no-confidence motion accusing the government of mismanaging the crisis, a claim spokeswoman Maud Bregeon dismissed as a “political maneuver.”
