/usr/bin/meson starts with "#!/usr/bin/env python2" although python2 is not in PYTHON_TARGETS any more for meson. This results in the error message /usr/lib/python-exec/python2.7/meson: this Python implementation (python2.7) is not supported by the script. e.g. compiling systemd now fails. Replacing python2 by python3 on the shebang line fixes it.
Sorry, my mistake - dev-lang/python-exec apparently was not properly installed.