The really surprising thing is that it isn’t higher.
People are finally losing faith in the European Union’s ability to deliver on its promise. That is one of the main findings of a survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which is based on almost 6,000 interviews with respondents in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which obviously is not in the EU.
“For many of the people we spoke to, the problem is not that they have stopped wanting a stronger Europe, but that they no longer believe that it is achievable,” says Pawel Zerka, author of the study. “There is a gap in ideas.” And a chasm in leadership (more on that later).
Scepticism is particularly high in France, Germany and Italy. Only twelve percent of those surveyed see signs of a “European renewal” or “awakening”. According to the survey, war and security are the biggest concern — not much of a surprise given the amount of fearmongering around the Russian threat.
The economic cost of war in Europe also continues to grow, including as a result of the loss of cheap Russian energy and increased public spending on defence squeezing out spending on more socially beneficial items, such as health, education and infrastructure.
European governments’ newfound enthusiasm for military conscription, for a war against Russia they have no chance of winning, may also be concentrating minds. Of one thing EU citizens can rest assured: it won’t be the children of Europe’s political class going to the front.
So Ursula von der Leyen is asking Finland to prepare for war, meanwhile during an interview Ursula is asked,
“Are your own children in the military?”
Ursula, “No, ha ha ha”
Do as i say, not as i do…. https://t.co/54Je1ivB8m pic.twitter.com/pmen6NF3Ke
— Richard (@ricwe123) March 21, 2024
Across the countries covered by the interviews, many conversations followed a similar pattern, notes the report:
Each interview begins with an icebreaker question: “Let’s imagine you have a friend who fell asleep five years ago and has just woken up. This friend asks you: ‘How is Europe doing at the moment?’ How would you describe Europe today—what would you tell them?”
In their answers, by far the largest group of respondents (on average 68% across the six countries studied) talks about a general deterioration or loss of normality. Only 12% see opportunity in the crises confronting the continent and frame their responses in terms of Europe’s awakening or renewal…
People appreciate Europe, but they recognise the challenges it faces and express little faith in its collective capacity to deal with them. Even when respondents have big ambitions for Europe, they often talk about them as mere aspirations that are unlikely to become reality.
So, it may no longer be enough to distinguish only between pro-European and Eurosceptic voters. Another important divide is whether people believe European leaders (EU and national alike) can turn their hopes into reality.
The second biggest concern relates to the economic reality. In Italy, for instance, more than 40% of citizens fear the loss of prosperity. While the report barely touches upon what may actually be driving this trend, the Spanish economist Eduardo Garzon has produced an interesting Twitter thread on the role played by European governments’ ever more aggressive dismantling of the welfare state in the rise of the far-right across Europe.
While the main focus of the thread is the UK government’s gutting of the NHS, its lessons are extrapolable to many other European countries where similar austerity regimes have gutted welfare spending. As the thread is in Spanish, I have provided an English translation of the key points:
The far-right has been growing throughout Europe for years. A thousand explanations are given: immigration, social media, globalization… I’m sure they all hold some kernel of truth. But there is one factor that studies are beginning to document and about which much less is said: the dismantling of the welfare state.
A map showing the % vote share of far-right parties, from May 2025:
A study published in 2024 analyses the case of the United Kingdom and tries to establish a causal relationship between cuts in the public health system and the rise in votes for the far right. The results are revealing.
The NHS (UK National Health Service) is the largest publicly funded universal health service in the world. It serves more than 63 million people. It spends 11% of GDP. It is supported across the political spectrum. It is even a source of national pride.
Or at least it was. Because from 2013 to 2023 more than 3,000 health centres have been closed. Almost 1,700 of them were primary care centres. More than 25% of the total. More than 667,000 people have lost their local health centre.
The impact goes much further: patients of closed centres end up going to those still standing, which are duly overwhelmed. Longer waiting times, worse quality, late diagnoses. Satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest level in three decades. And when asked where public money should go, more than 70% answer: health.
The first finding of the study: closing a health centre increases citizen unrest by between 5 and 10%. The effect does not disappear over time, it compounds. By the third year after the closure, dissatisfaction is much higher than in the first. People don’t forget.
Second finding: after a closure, the intention to vote for the extreme right increases by between 2 and 5 percentage points. It is not a huge effect, but in the UK’s first-past-the-post system, voting for a third party is unusual. And the effect persists for at least 5 years.
Third finding: the effect is compounded in areas with greater immigration. Here is the key to the mechanism. The cuts and closures create resentment, but the direction of the anger – towards voting for the far right – depends on whether there is a greater presence of immigrants in the respective area.
Why? Because the extreme right has done a very effective job of framing [the causes of resentment]: “Your health centre has closed because too many immigrants come.” It is a false explanation – the cuts and closures are decided by the rulers, not the migrants – but it is simple, visible and emotionally powerful.
Tariq Ali offers a similar take for Germany, where the recent victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt has further fuelled ´fears of a far-right resurgence in Europe.
The situation in Germany reflects the state of Europe as a whole: disintegrating extreme centre parties, budgets designed for the ultra-rich, collapsing social infrastructures and a huge decline in educational standard. That is what I argue in more detail on my substack on…
— Tariq Ali (@TariqAli_News) September 8, 2026
Of course, the respondents to the ECFR’s survey are not uniquely pessimistic among collective West populations about the future of their countries and the world. Americans and Turks have shared similar sentiments in previous surveys. But as the authors of the report note, rising pessimism comes with a unique political risk in Europe:
Americans who lose faith in the future cannot realistically demand that the US be dismantled. Yet Europeans who lose confidence in the EU can plausibly ask for “less Europe” or even their country’s exit. And European integration has always depended on a future-facing promise: the idea of an “ever closer union” asks people to believe in both what Europe is and what it might become.
That belief is crumbling. While the report identifies two main reasons why people are losing confidence in the EU — war and security, and rising economic pressures — there are many more reasons that we have discussed over the years on Naked Capitalism. Here’s a small selection (I invite readers to add their own):
The EU’s total devotion to the precepts of neoliberalism, and near-total subordination to the interests of corporate stakeholders.
Brussels’ gaping democratic deficit, which is only matched by its growing fondness for authoritarian solutions, particularly in the digital realm. The EU is not just undemocratic, it is anti-democratic, as well as anti-free speech and anti-privacy.
The ever growing distance between the bloc’s governors — i.e., the Commissioners and the 720 MEPs living in the lap of tax-free, all-expenses paid luxury — and the governed.
Monetary union without fiscal or political union: as Wynne Godley warned in 1992, just after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, a single currency without a unified federal fiscal authority, a central budget, and mechanisms for regional economic transfer was a recipe for economic imbalances and political disunity. So it has proven.
The EU’s culture of corruption and impunity, as typified by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Pfizergate scandal.
The EU’s total obsession with the war in Ukraine, which has done more to destroy the bloc’s economic competitiveness than just about anything else.
The pusillanimous subservience of EU leaders, institutions and national member governments towards the US, which played such a key role in driving (and covertly funding) European integration in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s, and Israel, even as the latter has waged campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon.
Leadership Crisis
This is a topic we have discussed in great depth on Naked Capitalism in recent years, and is a problem that is particularly acute in today’s Europe, especially with deeply unqualified personnel like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas occupying the most senior leadership positions.
As such, it is no surprise that few of the survey’s respondents can name politicians who “represent positive examples of European action”. Almost half of them can’t think of anyone. Most others simply point to politicians from their own country or the party they support. Ursula von der Leyen – currently the face of the EU – hardly gets a mention.
In the six countries surveyed, four percent cite French President Emmanuel Macron as a positive example. The most cited person, mentioned by eight percent of respondents, was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
“No other country and no other leader generates comparable admiration,” says ECFR’s Zerka.
Which is interesting given Spain was not even among the six participating countries. Sánchez is particularly popular in Italy, where one in four respondents have a positive view of him. In France, the number is one in ten. Spain’s prime minister even has admirers in Germany. An older Green voter said in the ECFR study: “It’s great how Mr. Sánchez stands up to the USA.”
The irony, as an article in Welt points out, is that among European heads of government Sánchez has hardly any friends:
Many complain that he invests too little money in defense and thus angers US President Trump. Others – including even his Social Democrat counterpart Mette Frederiksen from Denmark – criticise Madrid’s relaxed migration policy. But many citizens, it seems, see Sánchez as an idol, primarily due to his opposition to Trump.
In Europe, the study suggests, there is a longing for self-confidence: Citizens apparently want Brussels to take a tougher stance vis-à-vis other governments… Europe, says a French Macron voter, for example, must no longer “allow itself to be led around by the nose by a madman.”
The madman in question is Trump, of course. For one thing that is conspicuously lacking from the Welt article is any mention of Netanyahu — arguably an even more dangerous madman — or Israel. Which is curious given that a large part of Sánchez’s appeal among EU citizens is surely down to the fact that he is the only prominent European leader to have taken a tough stance on Israel’s genocide — perhaps not tough enough, but tougher than the rest of his peers.
This is also one of the reasons why Sánchez has so few friends among Europe’s heads of government. Throughout Europe, there is a massive disconnect between how the general populace perceives Israel and how the country is treated by the EU and their respective national governments. This trend is typified by the Greek government’s recent decision to sign a bumper deal to buy Israeli military tech even as anti-Israeli sentiment among the Greek populace grows.
76% of young Greeks have unfavorable opinions of Israel over its genocide in Gaza.
But their government just signed a $3.6 billion deal to buy Israeli military technology – Israel’s biggest such sale ever. pic.twitter.com/Bi1yRYuJ9c
— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 9, 2026
Meanwhile in Spain, the Israeli chargé d’affaires, Dana Elrich, spoke yesterday at an event organised by former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar’s think tank, FAES. On the one hand, Elrich denied Israeli involvement in the recent migrant “invasion” of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. But she also warned Madrid that “not working with Israel on our defence also has a price for Spanish citizens.”
Aznar himself, a fervent Zionist and Atlanticist, was even more explicit about Madrid’s need to make good with Tel Aviv. Speaking alongside Elrich, he said:
“These days we have seen in the Ceuta drama the consequences of having distanced ourselves from the friendship of relevant allies. Spain must re-establish as soon as possible normal relations with Israel.”
That is as close as we’ll probably get to an admission from someone close to the highest echelons of power that what is happening in Ceuta is the result of Spain “making an enemy of Israel” through its government’s support for Palestine. As El Diario points out, “It’s an intriguing phrase that will only serve to encourage speculation about Israel’s role in those events.”
Aznar also insisted that “Israel is waging an asymmetrical war of blatant moral asymmetry. To brand Israel as a genocidal state is pure anti-Semitism.”
Most senior EU politicians, including, of course, Von der Leyen, would probably agree, which is one of copious reasons why most EU citizens have such a negative view of the EU.
