Abstract. Today, there is a worldwide and substantial degree of agreement that the ongoing and projected future climate change, especially global warming, is the defining challenge of our time. Rising temperatures pose significant and far-reaching risks to human health, well-being, and other vulnerable systems. Climate change is a global emergency that goes beyond national borders and is an issue that requires international cooperation and coordinated solutions at all levels. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. Its overarching goal is to hold ``the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels''. Nowadays, much scientific research is dedicated to investigating future climatic changes and their spatial heterogeneity at 2°C warming. The eastern Mediterranean region, which includes Southeast Europe, is proving to be a 'hotspot' of climate change. The present study evaluates the projected future warming and the short-term thermal conditions over this region in the Paris Agreement context based on historical temperature data from the newest edition of the HadCRUT dataset and climate simulations from 25-member global circulation models' ensemble of the recently released NEX-GDDP CMIP6 product. The study provides strong evidence that the prescribed +2°C temperature threshold over Southeast Europe will be exceeded already in the coming decades, indicating also minor scenario dependence in near-term projections.

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