​The first heatwaves of the season reveal how ​ill-prepared governments across the continent are to protect people from increasingly dangerous temperatures • Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Meteorological summer has begun, ushered in with scorching heat that struck before spring was up. Although western Europe is now mostly free from last week’s heat dome – which shattered temperature records for May in the UK and Ireland – it is already bracing for yet another sw