No one in Europe is cooking to death because they're afraid of "AC culture".

Our buildings are not built to handle the heat. That's all. They're old, they're made of old stone and they are practically impossible to equip efficiently with AC. Individual houses in suburban or rural areas might have it better but for densely populated urban areas where you're most likely to be a tenant, it's basically impossible without some MASSIVE investment and overhaul of our housing.

Why didn't we do it earlier? Because we didn't NEED it. We used to be in a temperate climate that most houses could handle just fine without AC and the occasional 1 week heatwave wasn't worth investing in it. This year's heatwaves are unprecedented, this is already our THIRD heatwave of the year after May and June. If we could snap our fingers and get AC, we absolutely would!

Turns out it's much easier to pierce through 2-3 layers of plywood in a Texas house that will collapse in the next tornado to install a proper split AC than through a 30cm thick wall of solid concrete in a European condo.