diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index e07ae35de..ac077fae1 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -2271,10 +2271,16 @@ endif
 
 glib_conf.set('HAVE_PROC_SELF_CMDLINE', have_proc_self_cmdline)
 
-python = find_program('python3', version: '>=3.5')
+python = import('python').find_installation('python3')
 # used for '#!/usr/bin/env <name>'
 python_name = 'python3'
 
+python_version = python.language_version()
+python_version_req = '>=3.5'
+if not python_version.version_compare(python_version_req)
+  error('Requires Python @0@, @1@ found.'.format(python_version_req, python_version))
+endif
+
 # Determine which user environment-dependent files that we want to install
 have_bash = find_program('bash', required : false).found() # For completion scripts
 bash_comp_dep = dependency('bash-completion', version: '>=2.0', required: false)