In summer 2003 I lived in Brussels and read French newspapers.
Official government mandated "summer vacation" was every July and August. Eight weeks. Almost all workers had that eight weeks off, because it was essentially against the law to require them to stay on. So stores weren't open, or had too few workers to bother shopping there, for two months out of the year.
Also, though, GOVERNMENT workers were gone. Including the emergency workers who would have rushed to the aid of all the elderly French who were suffering and dying in the heat wave of 2003.
FIFTEEN HUNDRED french people died that summer, of heatstroke and related conditions. Almost none got the ambulances they called for. The emergency workers were... on vacation. Mandated by the government which gave them their taxpayer-funded salaries.
Socialized medicine, folks.
And part of the perfect storm? Electricity in France cost so much, a lot of people did not HAVE air conditioning. They just suffered through the summer and looked forward to their gas-heated winter weather.
Guess who doesn't have much air conditioning?
Northwesterners. Not because they can't afford it; just because the weather doesn't often call for it.
Now they're counting the dead and blaming global warming, even if only by implication in this particular article. And they're advocating for the kind of socialist government the FRENCH have.
Remember 2003.