Problem

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s offer this week of “associate membership” for Canada was received rapturously in the European Parliament. But member states, noting that the EU treaties say nothing about “associate membership”, have already tempered expectations, as has the Canadian ambassador to the EU. Make no mistake, “associate membership” does not mean that Canada will join the single market or become bound by EU directives anytime soon. The offer is currently a rhetorical gesture that, without a legal definition, risks meaning nothing at all, or becoming an expanded version of CETA, the EU-Canada trade deal in force since 2017, rather than a genuine new form of partnership.

Solution

As the United States estranges its allies, the EU has an opportunity to position itself as an alternative geopolitical anchor. New forms of association could help the EU build the capacity to act as a genuine world power. But to succeed, “associate EU membership” must be narrow but deep. Narrow in that it stops short of single market access or freedom of movement (not because it is undesirable but because it is currently unworkable); deep in that it can provide the basis for a unique alliance on security, defence and resilience—and offer a template for co-operation with other allies.

To prevent the proposal from landing dead on arrival, the commission should quickly define what associate membership means, with a timetable and clear objectives. This would also reassure candidate countries that others are not jumping the queue, and distinguish the offer from the “associate membership” Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, has pitched for Ukraine as a waiting room for accession.

To carry real weight, associate membership must address the pressures driving Canada into the EU’s arms in the first place. Security, defence and resilience are where both sides depend the most on America, where both sides face similar threats, and for which they can get public buy-in. Easy wins exist in low-friction defence-institutional steps, such as deeper Canadian participation in PESCO, the EU’s defence-cooperation scheme; an administrative arrangement with the European Defence Agency; and a role in future EU security missions.

But the boldest step would be to make Canada a full member of the EU’s defence technological and industrial base. This would bind Canada into Europe’s security architecture and give EU members access to Canadian expertise and industrial capacity for joint development and procurement. France’s protectionist zeal will be an obstacle; its EU ambassador this week pushed for tougher “Made in Europe” rules that would restrict non-EU firms’ access to defence funding. However, if Germany, the Nordics and the Baltics put their combined weight behind associate memberships, they might just bring the French on board.

Context

The war in Ukraine, America’s treatment of its allies and rising global instability have prompted EU states to explore association models that offer their neighbours and allies closer ties without watering down EU membership itself. In her State of the European Union speech, von der Leyen invited Canada to become the bloc’s first “associate member”, but the commission has yet to explain what that would mean in practice.

Source

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Jana Kobzova, co-director of ECFR’s European Security programme, to discuss the mounting pressures facing Ukraine as it enters another wartime winter. Despite Ukraine’s success in disrupting Russian logistics and energy infrastructure, Russia has intensified its attacks on cities, energy networks and civilian targets, while Kyiv faces growing domestic political and economic strains.

Jana explains how shortages of air-defence interceptors, political infighting, corruption investigations and economic challenges are converging at a particularly difficult moment for Ukraine. She also examines Russia’s escalating hybrid attacks across Europe and how Europeans can strengthen their resilience—and Ukraine’s defences.

Together, Mark and Jana assess Ukraine’s ability to withstand these overlapping crises, the future of European support and the role Ukraine could play in Europe’s long-term security architecture. As Russia raises the pressure both on and off the battlefield, can Ukraine and its allies maintain the unity needed to hold the line?

This podcast episode was recorded on September 16th 2026.

Bookshelf
Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, by Julia Ioffe.

Source

💾

Summary

• Europe still expects Turkey to pick a side. It has refused, and a post-Erdogan government would refuse too.
• Turkey has become an embedded outsider: a middle power that builds strategic autonomy from inside the Western system—because that is where its leverage comes from.
• Ankara has now tools of its own: troops abroad, a $10bn arms industry, partners in the global south, a geography everyone needs and channels to actors Europeans cannot reach.
• Yet it still needs NATO for its security, Europe to buy its exports and fund its factories, and Western technology to power its best weapons.
• Europe should stop trying to resolve the contradiction and learn to capitalise on it. It should deepen cooperation where interests converge, tie benefits to reciprocal obligations and withhold access when Ankara acts against fundamental European interests.

At the NATO summit he hosted in Ankara this July, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, gifted visiting heads of state a peculiar souvenir: a Turkish-made revolver, loaded with live ammunition. Several delegations were left wondering how one declares an unregistered firearm at customs.

It was a fitting emblem: a gift no one could quite accept, from an ally no one can quite place. At the summit itself, Turkey had never looked more central to the alliance. The Ankara Summit Declaration called for “a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO”, reaffirmed Article 5 and placed European support for Ukraine at the heart of the alliance’s future. With NATO’s second-largest armed forces, an expanding defence industry and control of the Black Sea’s southern gateway, Turkey looked indispensable.

Look closer though and the picture is less tidy. This is still the NATO ally that bought Russia’s S-400 air-defence system, the EU candidate country whose membership negotiations have effectively collapsed, and the Black Sea power that arms Ukraine while maintaining extensive ties with Moscow. It is also, thanks to Erdogan’s close relationship with US president Donald Trump, an ally with unusual leverage over Washington at a time of strained transatlantic relations.

Turkey is neither drifting away from the West nor it is coming home. It has become an embedded outsider: a middle power that has learned to build strategic autonomy from inside the Western system rather than by leaving it. NATO still guarantees its security, Europe still buys its exports and funds its factories, and Western technology still powers its best weapons. But none of that buys alignment with Western preferences any more.

European policymakers have often treated this contradiction as a problem to solve. Their debate has revolved around whether Turkey can be “anchored” in the West or prevented from “drifting” towards Russia, China or the Middle East. Both approaches assume that Ankara must eventually pick a geopolitical home. It has chosen not to. Nor is this likely to change after Erdogan. A post-Erdogan government could be more democratic and predictable, but it would still be unlikely to abandon defence autonomy, regional activism or Turkey’s desire to balance among larger powers.

This paper argues that Europe should stop trying to resolve this contradiction and instead learn to capitalise on it. Turkey’s autonomy can frustrate Europeans, but it has also produced capabilities and relationships that Europe itself lacks. Its ability to maintain channels to Moscow helped it broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative and prisoner exchanges while continuing to arm Ukraine. Its military presence and political networks in Syria give it influence that few European states can match. Its growing defence industry could also make it an important partner in Europe’s rearmament.

It is true that the same autonomy sometimes works against European interests. In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey’s assertiveness has brought it into direct conflict with EU member states Greece and Cyprus. Elsewhere, its balancing between Russia and the West has sometimes undermined European objectives.

The more useful question for Europe therefore is not whether Turkey can ever be a reliable ally, but when its autonomy serves Europe and when it cuts against it. The answer is managed interdependence: deepen cooperation where interests converge, tie the benefits of cooperation to clear and reciprocal obligations and withhold these benefits when Ankara acts against fundamental European interests. The aim is not obedience. It is to make Turkey’s autonomy pay for Europe more often than it costs.

Under Erdogan: An old instinct transformed

Turkey’s pursuit of greater foreign-policy autonomy did not start with Erdogan. Since the early republic, Turkey’s Western alignment has coexisted with suspicion of Western intentions.

The young republic pursued Westernisation after fighting a war of independence against European powers. It developed close ties with Soviet Russia after the war, but Soviet pressure later helped justify Turkey’s integration into the US-led Western bloc, culminating in NATO membership in 1952. But alliance membership did not end tensions with the West. The Cyprus crisis, the 1974 military intervention and the subsequent US arms embargo reinforced Turkey’s conviction that it could not always rely on its allies.

Erdogan inherited this impulse, but he also transformed it. Over more than two decades, his governments have expanded Turkey’s geographical ambitions and given them a neo-Ottomanist flavour at home. Turkey has become more willing to use force abroad and built the institutions needed to sustain a more autonomous foreign policy. Erdogan has also added a personal style of decision-making and an ideological vocabulary. His slogan “the world is bigger than five” calls for reform of the UN Security Council. The term “precious loneliness”, coined in 2013 by his then foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalim, casts Turkey’s regional isolation as the price of moral consistency.

This transformation unfolded in four broad phases:

European integration

In the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) first years in power, from 2002 to roughly the end of that decade, Erdogan and his government were celebrated in the West as reformists. They used the EU accession process to modernise the economy, pursue political reforms and curb the military’s influence over civilian politics. Ankara also expanded trade and diplomacy across its neighbourhood, presenting this activism as complementary to its Western orientation.

Closer ties with Europe accompanied an economic boom. Turkey’s GDP rose from roughly $241bn in 2002 to $775bn in 2008, while GDP per capita tripled. Foreign investment surged after accession talks opened in 2005, from about $900m in 2002-04 to nearly $12bn a year in 2005-08. EU member states accounted for roughly three-quarters of inflows by 2008.

Regional ambitions and civilisational mission

From the late 2000s through the Arab uprisings, Ankara became more ambitious in its neighbourhood. Foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s “zero problems with neighbours” doctrine reflected a growing belief that Turkey’s history, location and political model gave it a distinctive regional role. Economic growth and mediation underpinned this confidence, while construction companies, television dramas, Turkish Airlines, diplomats, religious institutions and development agencies extended the country’s soft power.

However, the Syrian civil war, Egypt’s military coup and the regional backlash against the Arab uprisings upended this strategy. Soft power gave way increasingly to hard power and regional rivalry.

“Precious loneliness”

The decisive turn came between 2015 and 2020. The collapse of the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a failed coup attempt of July 2016 fed a sense of geopolitical isolation and a more combative foreign policy. As Turkey grew more authoritarian, with executive power consolidated in the presidency, the country launched several external military operations in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and expanded its overseas military presence across the Middle East. It also cultivated closer economic and defence ties with Russia to reduce dependence on the US and Europe, both of which were becoming increasingly concerned about Turkey’s democratic backsliding and regional activism.

Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 systems in 2017 became the clearest symbol of this rupture. It led to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 programme—the US-led fighter-jet project for which Turkish firms were supplying components—in 2019 and to American sanctions in 2020. This purchase showed that Ankara was prepared to defy its allies when it believed core security interests were at stake.

Anti-Western sentiment rose significantly during this period. Many Turks blamed the US for the failed coup attempt and for supporting Kurdish forces in Syria affiliated with the PKK. The post-coup crackdown, along with the 2017 constitutional referendum, helped create a national security state and concentrated decision-making even more in the presidency.

Military interventions in Syria and elsewhere during this period also created their own momentum. The armed forces, intelligence services, defence companies and the state bureaucracy acquired the skills and experience to sustain overseas operations, cooperate with non-state partners and convert military involvement into diplomatic leverage.

Transactional re-embedding

By the end of 2020, Ankara concluded that its assertive posture had become counterproductive—it had alienated Western allies and Middle Eastern governments alike, thereby helping create an anti-Turkey alignment across multiple fronts. Intensifying great power rivalry and the fragmentation of the West also made Turkish leaders more anxious about being left out in the cold in a tumultuous world. The recalibration was also economic: a currency crisis at the end of 2020 left Ankara in acute need of external capital—Western and Gulf alike—and de-escalation on both fronts was the price of access to it.

From 2021, Ankara therefore sought to repair ties with former regional rivals, from Saudi Arabia to Greece, and pursued a pragmatic reset with Europe and America—while preserving its autonomy.

Turkey’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine captured this shift. Ankara condemned the invasion, supplied Kyiv with drones that proved highly effective early on, refused to recognise Moscow’s annexations, and invoked Montreux’s wartime provisions to close the Straits to belligerents’ warships, which mainly constrained Russia’s Black Sea fleet. It saved its neutrality for the economic sphere, declining to join Western sanctions and casting itself as mediator, keeping Moscow close.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House created another opportunity to reboot ties with the Western system. Erdogan and Trump share a disdain for liberal Europe and a preference for flexible, transactional and personalised diplomacy. Close ties between the two presidents and their inner circles also facilitated dialogue on Gaza, Caucasus, Ukraine and Syria, with a surprising degree of alignment on many of these files.

Ankara increasingly saw its military leverage and geography as the basis for strategic autonomy—a foreign policy built on cultivating ties across rival centres of power so that no single relationship became indispensable and none foreclosed another. It sought closer defence-industrial ties with European states without abandoning its domestic production. It normalised relations with Gulf monarchies while retaining military or political networks in Libya, Syria, Palestine and Somalia. It renewed dialogue with the EU while prioritising bilateral ties with individual member states. Even as a NATO member, it flirted with membership of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

In August 2026, Turkey joined Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement—a trilateral mutual-defence pact dubbed in the media as a “Muslim NATO” that commits the three states to Article 5-like security guarantees. Building on a 2025 Saudi-Pakistani accord, the pact signals Turkey’s ambition to make regional security arrangements of its own, even as it remains in NATO. However, the new pact so far lacks the integrated command, joint planning and shared threat perception that would make it a functioning alliance rather than a political declaration.

The Mecca agreement aligns with Turkey’s ambition to keep a foot in several camps. Many in the country’s ruling elite see a larger role in the Middle East and on the world stage as Ankara’s natural destiny. Meanwhile, where previous US presidents saw Turkey’s regional ambitions as disruptive, the Trump administration came to view Ankara as a useful and capable regional partner.

Turkish foreign policy under Erdogan has not travelled a simple path from pro-Westernism to anti-Westernism and back again. Ankara has rebuilt its foreign policy repeatedly around the needs of the ruling far-right nationalist coalition at home and what a changing international order permits abroad. The re-embedding since 2021 is no exception: it did not reverse Turkey’s pursuit of strategic autonomy, but relocated it. Ankara now seeks that autonomy from inside Western structures, because that is where the leverage lies.

Beyond Erdogan: Different versions of autonomy

Although Erdogan’s dominance at home is a reality, in 2024, the opposition alliance led by the Republican People’s Party swept local elections, taking Istanbul, Ankara and most major cities—its best showing since 1979. The following March, Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoglu, the opposition’s presidential candidate and the man most likely to beat Erdogan, was arrested on corruption charges widely seen as politically motivated. Two decades of Erdogan rule have narrowed political space, but they have not closed it.

So what would change in foreign policy in a post-Erdogan Turkey? A successor could reset relations with the West and rebuild institutions. But a new government would not rethink the fundamentals—that Turkey must keep its freedom of action, arm itself and depend on no single power. Those assumptions no longer rest on one man’s decisions. They rest on an elite consensus, underpinned by a domestic defence industry, bases across three continents and Turkey’s own geography—and reinforced by a fragmenting international order that makes autonomy look like a necessity.

Public sentiment also seems to embrace an independent foreign policy. Turks might be split over Erdogan and domestic governance, but they largely agree on autonomy and avoiding unconditional alignment with any single outside power. Ukraine makes this point clearly. In a 2022 Kadir Has University survey, 52% of respondents wanted Turkey to remain impartial and 50.7% wanted it to mediate. Only 21.5% backed sanctioning Russia and 20.8% backed supporting it. In spring 2024 polling by Pew Research Center, a plurality of Turks (46%) said Turkey was providing the right amount of support to Ukraine.

The Iran war reveals a similar picture. A MetroPoll survey in March 2026 found that 68.1% wanted Turkey to remain neutral between Iran and the US, compared with 22.6% favouring support for Iran and 2.1% for the US and Israel. Neutrality won among the voters of every major party. This was no affection for the mullahs; rather, Turks fear a collapsing Iran would send refugees across the border, give the Kurdish insurgency new momentum, disrupt the Turkish economy and embolden Israel.

The argument at home is therefore about the methods, not autonomy itself. The opposition parties criticise the AKP-MHP government’s rhetoric and self-inflicted isolation, yet they treat maritime jurisdiction, the Aegean and Cyprus as national issues. In the 2022 Kadir Has survey, half or more of every major party’s supporters named maritime jurisdiction and the militarisation of Aegean islands among Turkey’s main problems with Greece.

A 2022 Carnegie study that interviewed opposition foreign-policy figures found the same. Most favoured repairing relations with the US and EU, restoring the foreign ministry’s authority, reducing personal diplomacy, and resolving the S-400 dispute to reopen the path to the F-35 programme. They also wanted no confrontation with Russia, no concessions on Turkey’s maritime claims, and no American weapons for Syria’s Kurds.

A post-Erdogan Turkey would therefore be a different kind of embedded outsider, not a former one. Democratisation and a return to institutional decision-making would make Turkey more predictable. But Ankara would still likely pursue diversified partnerships, its own arms industry, regional influence and the ability to say no to allies.

Turkey no longer treats the West as a complete strategic home or a reliable guarantor of its interests. Yet Russia, China, Iran and the Gulf cannot replace the security, markets, technology and institutional ties it draws from NATO, Europe and America. Turkey thus hedges from the inside. Europe cannot end that, and no Turkish government would tolerate the attempt. Its only realistic aim is to keep the hedge bending westward.

What Turkey is embedded in

Turkey today is rarely described as a European power. Yet it is still a NATO member and, technically, an EU candidate. It is also a partner for Europe and the US on critical regional issues ranging from containment of Iran to counter-terrorism and support for Ukraine.

But Turkey’s Western embeddedness goes much deeper than institutions. Its economy, private sector, defence industry and society are tightly integrated with the West, particularly Europe. These connections constrain Turkish autonomy, but they also enable it: the markets, technology, capital and security relationships Turkey draws on to project power remain disproportionately Western.

Economic embeddedness: Europe as market and regulatory ecosystem

The EU remains the centre of gravity of the Turkish economy. The customs union, in force since 1996, goes far beyond an ordinary free-trade agreement. It removed tariffs and quantitative restrictions on industrial goods and required Turkey to align with important parts of EU customs, commercial, competition, intellectual-property and technical legislation.

The numbers remain striking despite political tensions. The EU accounts for 42.7% of Turkey’s goods exports and 35.3% of its imports, with volume reaching €217.6bn in 2025. Services trade added €42.1bn in 2024.

Trade volumes understate the depth of integration. Turkish factories are embedded in European production networks, supplying the automotive, appliance, machinery, textile and electronics industries while relying on European capital goods, technology, standards and intermediate inputs. By mid-2025, Turkey reported that it had aligned 24,597 national standards with European standards, a harmonisation rate of 99.5% with the European Committee for Standardisation and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation systems.

European capital has been equally important. Turkey received roughly $200bn in foreign-equity inflows between 2003 and 2025, with around 60% originating in the EU. The West as a whole, including the US, UK and Canada, supplies roughly 70% of Turkey’s foreign direct investment.

Ankara has tried to diversify, towards Russia, the Gulf and, above all, China. It joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015, applied to BRICS in 2024 and courted Chinese manufacturing, including electric vehicle manufacturer BYD, whose $1bn plant in Turkey will benefit from access to the EU market. But China has not emerged as an alternative to the EU. Chinese firms treat Turkey as high-risk and stayed out of the top 20 sources of foreign investment in 2024. Turkey runs a large trade deficit with Beijing and competes with it for influence in Africa and Central Asia, while Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur population remains a source of tension.

No partner has been able to match Europe’s market, investment stock and dense supply chains. Ankara’s economic autonomy therefore has limits. It can diversify eastwards, but the capital, technology and markets on which much of its industry depends remain Western. That dependence is sharpened by chronic macroeconomic fragility—high inflation, a weak lira and reliance on external financing—which has repeatedly forced Ankara to seek Gulf and Western capital, setting a hard ceiling on its autonomy.

This dependence also comes with a political irritation. Through the customs union, Turkey aligns with relevant EU regulations but has no say in making them. The agreement is also outdated, excluding services, digital commerce, public procurement, agriculture and climate regulation. The European Commission proposed negotiations to modernise it in 2016, but the European Council has yet to approve a mandate.

This captures a contradiction in Turkish foreign policy. Ankara seeks privileged access to the EU economy while demanding political distance from Brussels. Yet much of its industrial power, export capacity and ability to attract investment still depends on its position at the edge of Europe.

Security embeddedness: Inside NATO’s architecture

Turkey’s security ties with the West are deep. A NATO member since 1952, Turkey has the alliance’s second-largest military after the US and critical infrastructure including the Incirlik air base, where US nuclear weapons are widely believed to be stored; the Kurecik early-warning radar system that covers the Middle East; the Allied Land Command headquarters in Izmir; and forward bases at Konya and Istanbul. Turkey and its territory are therefore woven into a NATO security architecture that stretches from the Middle East to Europe’s eastern flank.

Despite the on-and-off crises with America and a more ambivalent policy towards Russia than most European allies, Turkey’s relationship with NATO is not dormant. Not only has Ankara recently hosted the NATO summit, it has also continued to support NATO’s collective defence missions, including participating in the Baltic Air Policing in 2006 and 2021. After the summit, Turkey agreed to do so again in 2026, even as it maintains cordial relations with Moscow. And while Turkey has worked hard to reduce its military dependence on its allies, many of its high-end programmes still depend on Western engines, components, certification, financing and export access.

Yet embeddedness has not meant deference or loyalty. For example, when Sweden and Finland sought to join NATO, Ankara used its veto in the alliance as leverage—delaying ratification until it had extracted commitments on the PKK and, from the US, approval of a major F-16 sale. Turkey capitalises on its position in NATO as much as it upholds the alliance.

Social and political embeddedness: A diaspora and a stalled accession

Turkey’s political relationship with Europe is weakest precisely where its institutional ties are deepest. Ankara applied to the European Economic Community in 1959, signed the Ankara Agreement in 1963, became an EU candidate in 1999 and opened accession talks in 2005. Those negotiations have now effectively collapsed: only 16 of 35 chapters were opened and just one closed before the process froze. In 2018, the EU General Affairs Council noted that accession talks had come to a standstill, stopping short of formal suspension, but freezing the opening or closing of any new chapters. In 2025, the European Parliament reaffirmed this, on the grounds that Turkey’s strategic importance cannot offset its democratic backsliding and divergence from European norms.

Yet neither side has formally ended the process. Turkey remains a candidate, receives pre-accession funding and participates in EU programmes like Erasmus and Horizon Europe. It is also in the European Political Community and has expressed a desire to be part of a future European security architecture.

Turkey’s European embeddedness is also demographic. Since the 1960s, migration has created communities whose lives span Turkey and Europe. At the end of 2024, around two million Turkish citizens held valid residence permits in the EU, excluding naturalised citizens and second generation Turks born in Europe. Germany alone is home to about 2.6 million people of Turkish background, the country’s largest single-origin immigrant community. Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Sweden also have sizeable Turkish communities.

Turkey’s European diaspora connects Turkish cities and regions to European labour markets, schools, businesses, media and political parties. They also make Europe an arena of Turkish domestic politics: governments and opposition parties campaign among overseas voters, while disputes about nationalism, religion, Kurdish identity and democratic rights spill into European public life. Europe is therefore not just an external actor but an extension of the political debate in Ankara.

Turkey’s political estrangement from the EU can also obscure the continued attraction Europe holds for many Turks. In a spring 2025 survey commissioned by the EU delegation to Turkey, 58% said they would support EU membership in a referendum and 66% said membership would bring more advantages than disadvantages. Visa-free travel, higher living standards and employment opportunities were the most frequently cited benefits. Similarly, Pew found in 2024 that 56% supported EU membership, rising to 66% among those under 35. Polls show mixed motivations for supporting Turkey’s accession to the EU, with younger, urban and educated Turks consistently aspiring to European legal and political standards even as faith in accession has eroded.

Migration creates another form of interdependence between Turkey and Europe. Turkey hosts a large refugee population and sits on major migration routes from the Middle East and Asia into Europe. European governments have relied on Turkey as a buffer, most explicitly through the 2016 EU-Turkey migration deal. Meanwhile, Ankara has periodically used refugee flows as political leverage, but it has also come to rely on EU funds to manage migration. Neither side can manage migration sustainably without the other.

The instruments of autonomy

Turkey’s distinctive position among middle powers lies not only in its aspiration to act independently but in the tools it has built to do so. It is one of the few middle powers that treats military force as a routine instrument rather than an exception, and the only one that has turned the resulting hardware into a diplomatic currency.

Five tools carry Turkish influence abroad: an expeditionary military, a strong arms industry, a geography that charges rent, an apparatus for soft power and a habit of brokering other people’s wars. Each has widened Ankara’s room for manoeuvre, but each also reveals the limits of Turkish autonomy.

An expeditionary military

What changed under the AKP was less Turkey’s appetite for military activism abroad than how it used force. Before the Arab uprisings, Turkish deployments took place largely within NATO and UN frameworks. But over the past decade, Ankara has increasingly acted unilaterally to advance its own security interests, using forward bases, long-term deployments and partnership with local armed actors. Syria, Libya, Iraq and the Caucasus region each show a version of the method.

In Syria, four cross-border operations between 2016 and 2020 created a belt of Turkish-controlled territory in the north, governed through the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army. Ankara’s presence also helped preserve an opposition-controlled enclave in Idlib, from which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) emerged and eventually overthrew Bashar al-Assad, in December 2024. Turkey has since become the most important external backer of Syria’s new government, signing a defence accord in August 2025 to train, equip and advise the army Damascus is rebuilding out of former rebel factions. Ankara’s leverage nonetheless has limits: it has not yet converted this partnership into permanent bases beyond the north, constrained by Israeli red lines and Damascus’s own wariness of overdependence.

Turkey has similarly intervened militarily in Libya since 2020, when it helped prevent warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces overrunning the internationally recognised government in Tripoli. The intervention has shifted the military balance and entrenched a Turkish security presence, which Ankara subsequently converted into economic and political leverage—against the will of competitors like Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and the UAE. However, Turkey has recently repaired relations with Egypt and opened channels to actors in eastern Libya.

In Iraq, Ankara’s footprint has proved more durable, driven primarily by its campaign against the PKK. A network of forward operating bases across the north has hardened into a de-facto security belt along the border. And despite renewed efforts to resolve the Kurdish question—such as PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan’s 2025 call to disarm and the party’s subsequent dissolution—Ankara is unlikely to dismantle that presence in the near future.

Beyond those, Turkey maintains bases in northern Cyprus, facilities in Qatar, and a training base in Mogadishu. Turkey’s regional footprint today is far larger than it was two decades ago.

Defence

Turkey’s expanding defence industry provides the material foundation for this more assertive foreign policy. Once a buyer of US weapons systems, Turkey has spent the last three decades building its capacity to produce a range of high- and low-end systems, from armed drones and navy vessels to armoured vehicles, missiles, tanks and artillery shells.

Defence and aerospace exports reached $10.05bn in 2025, a dramatic hike from $248m in 2002. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ranked Turkey the 11th-largest exporter of major arms for 2021-25, with five Turkish firms—MKE, ASELSAN, Turkish Aerospace, Baykar and Roketsan—entering its global top 100 in 2025. Many of their systems have been battle-tested in Karabakh, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. In the early phase of the Ukraine war, Baykar’s TB2 “Bayraktar” drones gained particular prominence and have since become a symbol of Turkey’s defence-industrial rise. This transformation in the defence industrial base has given Ankara capabilities and relationships in Africa, Central Asia and Europe it did not possess two decades ago.

Greater autonomy, however, is not self-sufficiency. Turkish officials boast that the domestic share of defence production has risen from about 20% in the early 2000s to roughly 80%. But that figure conceals continued dependency on imported technology in propulsion, power transmission, advanced materials and aviation components. For example, Turkey’s flagship fifth-generation fighter-jet, the KAAN, relies on imported engines, as its indigenous turbofan is still in development. Altay tanks entered production with a South Korean power pack, pending integration of the domestic BATU engine and transmission. Imported engines and export licences have also complicated both production and sales of systems such as the Firtina howitzer.

One way Turkey has sought to overcome these constraints has been by embedding itself into the European defence base. In 2025, Baykar and Italy’s Leonardo formed LBA Systems, a fifty-fifty joint venture headquartered in Italy to build unmanned systems, while Baykar outright bought Italian aerospace company Piaggio Aerospace, with its production lines inside the EU. Also in 2025, Turkish Aerospace agreed to supply Spain with Hürjet trainer jets in a €2.6bn deal, which includes substantial production in Spain. These are co-production arrangements inside European supply chains.

Turkey’s defence-industrial autonomy is therefore uneven. It is strongest where companies have accumulated design experience and domestic supply chains, and weakest where production depends on complex propulsion or externally controlled components. And while the industry’s rise has reduced the ability of any single country or supplier to block Turkish military action, its most ambitious programmes still depend on Western technology, certification, finance and markets. This captures the logic of the embedded outsider. Turkey has built greater autonomy not by leaving Western industrial networks, but by using domestic production, offset agreements and selective partnerships to improve its bargaining position within them.

Connectivity

Ankara has not created its own geography, but it has learned to monetise it. Turkey sits between Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Russia, astride important trade and energy routes. It is crisscrossed by several energy pipelines despite producing little energy itself. And regional disorder only makes Turkey’s location more valuable.

Azerbaijani oil and gas cross Anatolia through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Southern Gas Corridor. Russian gas reaches Turkey and south-eastern Europe through Blue Stream and TurkStream, while Iranian gas enters from the east. Expanding liquefied natural gas terminals give Ankara access to seaborne supplies from America, Qatar and elsewhere.

Turkey has also invested in logistics and connectivity. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway connects Turkey to the trans-Caspian Middle Corridor, linking Central Asia and China westwards. Ankara regards the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, which bypasses Turkey, as a geopolitical challenge. It has instead backed the $17bn Development Road, linking Iraq’s al-Faw Grand Port through Turkey to Europe. Instability in the Strait of Hormuz has given a boost to this project. This eastward reach also has an institutional home: Turkey leads the Organization of Turkic States, a bloc spanning Azerbaijan and Central Asia that hopes to turn the corridor’s unique geography and ethnic ties into standing political influence.

Soft power

Turkey’s ambitions are also supported by an extensive cultural and diplomatic network. It now operates 255 diplomatic missions, up from 163 in 2002, with the number of African embassies rising from 12 to 44 in this period.

In addition to its diplomatic corps, there is the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, the Turkish Maarif Foundation, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, the Yunus Emre Institute and the state broadcaster TRT World. All of those are active in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Turkish Airlines has also become an unusually effective instrument for connectivity and visibility. The Antalya Diplomacy Forum now serves as a flagship venue to showcase Turkey’s ambition to convene international actors, modelled after the Munich Security Conference, India’s Raisina Dialogue and Russia’s Valdai Discussion Club.

Perhaps Turkey’s most effective soft power, however, is one the state neither built nor controls. In 2024, Turkish producers exported more than 300 television dramas to over 150 countries, earning over $500m a year and reaching close to a billion viewers. They have made Turkey’s language, cities and lifestyle familiar across the Balkans, Middle East, Latin America and parts of Africa. The state has since moved to harness this success: TRT’s own historical epics carry a more explicit neo-Ottoman message abroad, while per–episode export subsidies introduced in 2026 aim to bend the commercial sector toward promoting Turkey’s image.

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid, education, religion, media, commerce and defence partnerships reinforce the conservative government’s “civilisational” narrative, placing Turkey at the centre of a wider historical and cultural world. Turkey’s overseas network promotes Palestinian rights and positions Turkey as a natural leader of Muslim nations. Erdogan’s slogan that “the world is bigger than five”, referring to the UN Security Council, captures this ambition.

Yet Turkey’s economic fragility sets a hard limit on its ambitions. Inflation peaked at 85.5% in October 2022 and, despite the return to orthodox monetary policy after the 2023 election, remained above 32% in mid-2026. A volatile lira and persistent inflation make it harder to finance reconstruction in Syria, sustain long-term influence in Africa and compete with other powers. Technological dependence, weak institutions and personalised decision-making reinforce these constraints.

Mediation

Mediation became a signature of Turkish foreign policy in the mid-2000s. Under the Davutoglu doctrine of “zero problems with neighbours”, Ankara presented itself as a country able to speak simultaneously to the West, the West’s regional adversaries and the Muslim world. Ankara facilitated indirect talks between Syria and Israel in 2008, engaged in Balkan diplomacy and, alongside Brazil, negotiated a nuclear fuel-swap with Iran in 2010. Also that year, Turkey and Finland launched a UN Friends of Mediation group.

That premise collapsed with the Arab uprisings. Ankara’s support for Syrian opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood, along with its feuds with the Arab Gulf monarchies, Egypt and Israel, made Turkey increasingly party to the region’s conflicts rather than a neutral mediator. As it expanded its regional entanglements, the nature of its mediation efforts changed. From 2017, Ankara worked with Russia and Iran through the Astana process on ceasefires and de-escalation deals in Syria even while backing the opposition on the ground. In Libya in 2020, Turkey participated in the Berlin process as a stakeholder while its troops were deployed in Tripoli. Ankara was not mediating because it stood outside these conflicts, but because it was embedded in them.

From the 2020s, Turkey’s mediation rested on a different foundation. Its leverage came from its higher international profile and its unique access to regional conflicts, such as in Gaza and Ukraine.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Turkey has hosted several rounds of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials, facilitated prisoner exchanges and, with the UN, brokered the Black Sea grain deal in 2022. None ended the war, but the grain agreement kept a critical maritime trade route open for almost a year and demonstrated the value of Ankara’s working relationships with both Moscow and Kyiv.

In the final round of negotiations leading to the Gaza ceasefire, Turkey used its relationship with Hamas to convince the armed group to sign the US-brokered agreement with a specific clause for disarmament. Ankara provided political guarantees that helped bring Hamas to the table, but its involvement also led Israel to veto a greater Turkish role in a multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza.

Turkey’s comparative advantage in mediation therefore does not come from neutrality but access. Its willingness to maintain relationships across geopolitical divides can make Ankara frustrating for its Western allies. But it is also precisely what allows Turkey to reach actors that Europeans and Americans sometimes cannot.

What it means for Europe

For Europe, the instruments described above could be assets or liabilities, depending on where and how Turkey uses them. The three case studies that follow trace that variation. In Ukraine and Syria, autonomy generates outcomes Europe wants—grain corridors, prisoner exchanges, a check on Russian and Iranian influence—that a more compliant ally could not have delivered. In the eastern Mediterranean, the same autonomy cuts the other way, pitting Turkey directly against two member states. Together, the three cases leave Europe with a question: how to channel an autonomy it can influence but cannot switch off.

Ukraine: Pro-Kyiv, but not anti-Moscow

Ankara’s position is often summarised as “pro-Ukraine without being anti-Russia”—a formulation that frustrates European allies but has proved durable. Turkey recognises Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including Crimea, and built a substantial defence relationship with Kyiv before the full-scale invasion, selling it Bayraktar TB2 drones and agreeing joint production. It was also among the few NATO states willing to provide strategically significant military technology before February 2022.

At the same time, Ankara refused to join Western sanctions, kept extensive ties with Moscow and described Russia’s aggression in cautious language. After the invasion, it invoked the wartime provisions of the Montreux Convention, closing the Straits to belligerent warships—a move that limited escalation while also constraining NATO’s naval access.

Ankara’s access to both capitals produced results, though not a ceasefire. In 2022, Turkey brokered the Black Sea grain deal with the UN and has facilitated several prisoner exchanges. But it has also been a key conduit for trade with Russia, the flipside of its balancing act.

Ukraine shows the embedded outsider at work: Turkey supports the principles and institutions that protect its own security while reserving the right to diverge from the broader Western strategy. While this balancing is self-interested, it has at times served Ukrainian or European interests.

Syria: Access without capital

Syria offers the clearest demonstration of Turkey’s embedded-outsider role in practice. After more than a decade of cross-border operations, troop deployments, intelligence work and local patronage, Ankara entered the post-Assad period with leverage few external powers could match: close access to President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government, influence over armed groups in the north, control of border routes, a substantial military presence, and a strong hand in debates about reconstruction and refugee returns. Assad’s fall also weakened Turkey’s rivals, Iran and Russia, and opened up space for Ankara to expand its political and economic influence.

Yet Syria remains a work in progress. Turkey met its core security objective—blocking a PKK-linked autonomous zone along its border—and deepened its leverage in Damascus, but it has neither established a new order nor reaped the economic benefits of its patronage.

Syria’s battered economy is one constraint. Ankara can reopen trade routes, repair energy links and position its companies for reconstruction, but it cannot finance Syria’s recovery alone; that will depend on external capital, European and Gulf support and governance reforms.

Israel is another problem. It remains deeply suspicious of an enlarged Turkish role and has attacked sites earmarked for Turkish military installations. Turkey, in turn, views Israeli support for Syria’s Druze and Kurdish minorities as an obstacle to state consolidation. The Turkish-Israeli rivalry, sharpened since 2024 by Gaza and in the contest for Syria’s new government, increasingly structures the regional order into rival camps: Ankara’s Sunni grouping on one side and an Israel-Greece-Cyprus bloc on the other.

Syria is therefore where Turkey’s embedded-outsider status could pay off most—and where its limits show most clearly. Ankara has access, military leverage and relationships Europe cannot easily reproduce, but not the financial resources and institutional capacity to rebuild Syria on its own. Its ability to shepherd the transition depends, paradoxically, on the very Western relationships it has sought to loosen.

The eastern Mediterranean: Autonomy that backfires

The eastern Mediterranean shows the other side of bounded autonomy. Turkish hydrocarbon exploration in waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus triggered EU sanctions in 2020, and contested maritime claims between the three countries remain. This is potentially the most dangerous flashpoint in Turkey’s relations with the EU.

The dispute predates Erdogan. It is rooted in the unresolved conflict in Cyprus and competing interpretations of maritime jurisdiction in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Ankara rejects Greek claims that islands close to the Anatolian coast should generate extensive maritime zones, and resists any arrangement it sees as restricting Turkey’s access to the open sea. Successive rounds of UN-led negotiations—including a 2004 referendum and the 2017 talks at Crans-Montana—have failed to produce a settlement.

These longstanding trilateral disagreements have sprawled into a regional confrontation. Offshore gas exploration around Cyprus has repeatedly stoked tensions over the past decade, while closer defence and energy ties between Cyprus, Greece and Israel have reinforced Ankara’s sense of encirclement.

Tensions peaked in 2020, when Turkish and Greek vessels came close to direct conflict. The EU subsequently imposed targeted sanctions linked to Turkish drilling activities. At that time, the German former chancellor Angela Merkel became personally involved in shuttle diplomacy between Ankara and Athens and helped avert a military confrontation. But since Merkel left office, no European leader has had the same standing with Erdogan or mounted a comparable sustained effort to address the underlying political dispute.

As long as Cyprus remains divided, Ankara is unlikely to abandon its insistence that Nicosia cannot unilaterally develop the island’s hydrocarbon resources without agreement on how Turkish Cypriots will share in them. Ankara is also unlikely to accept any Greek extension of territorial waters from six to twelve nautical miles in the Aegean—a step the Turkish parliament declared a casus belli in 1995—on grounds that it would sharply curtail its own access to the open sea. That suggests a limit to punitive conditionality by the EU. Targeted sanctions may raise the price of Turkish actions, but by themselves they are unlikely to change Ankara’s position on an issue it regards as a core national interest.

But Europe has not yet seriously tested sustained diplomacy aimed at the source of the dispute. The EU should invest political capital in a renewed Cyprus settlement process, working alongside the UN and encouraging a negotiated arrangement between the island’s two communities. It should not approach the conflict simply as a dispute between a member state and an outside power. The EU cannot easily present itself as a neutral actor when Cyprus is itself a member state, but it can provide incentives, pressure Nicosia into talks, and use diplomatic weight and the prospect of deeper Turkey-EU integration, with security guarantees for Cyprus, to support a settlement. Without progress on Cyprus, the island will remain a perennial obstacle to a more functional relationship between Turkey and Europe.

***

The three case studies show the uses and limits of Turkish autonomy. In Ukraine, Ankara worked both sides without breaking with either, creating access Europe could use. In Syria, Turkish power created leverage but not the resources to consolidate it. In the eastern Mediterranean, autonomy produced confrontation, while European sanctions contained some of the immediate costs without resolving the political dispute that generated them.

A European strategy for the embedded outsider

Europe’s Turkey policy swings between two illusions: that Ankara can be brought back to the Western alignment of the 1990s, or that it is lost and can only be contained. A country this entangled with Europe yet so determined to act alone fits neither.

The alternative is managed interdependence. It begins from two facts: first, Turkish autonomy is here to stay—no future government will return to unquestioned Western alignment; second, autonomy stops well short of independence—Turkey still relies on NATO for ultimate security, Europe for markets, capital, technology and regulation, and America for advanced defence cooperation and regional deterrence.

Europe should use that dependence without trying to eliminate Turkish autonomy. It should make Western cooperation valuable enough that Ankara keeps its forces interoperable, honours common rules and avoids partnerships that damage allied security.

There are limits to this policy. Ankara is unlikely to agree to Greek or Cypriot maritime claims, but it could be open to a UN-led settlement or a deal dividing hydrocarbon resources. Europe should push for that instead of settling for the status quo, even at the cost of having to pressure Cyprus into a new framework or resumption of UN-led talks.

The reality is that European leverage on the eastern Mediterranean is limited, and punitive measures will not change the Turkish calculus. In order to build leverage, Europe first has to define a credible endgame in the conflict and try something new: positive engagement with Ankara aimed at a durable settlement to the frozen conflict. A good place to start would be a pan-Mediterranean conference, inviting Turkey, to set out the disputes and the case for diplomacy. Following that, the EU could work with the UN to push Cyprus and Turkey back to the table, either for a final settlement on Cyprus or a resource-sharing deal on hydrocarbons. 

On the broader agenda with Turkey, the EU should pursue separate, self-contained deals across defence, trade, regional security, migration and mobility. Cyprus can block some of these deals, but in the end can be persuaded by other member states to agree to a more pragmatic approach in return for security guarantees. Each deal should exchange concrete benefits for defined obligations with clear monitoring so that cooperation no longer rests on personal ties between leaders.

The return of Donald Trump somewhat complicates this strategy. Erdogan’s direct relationship with Washington can reduce the immediate cost of ignoring Brussels by giving Ankara another route into the Western system. But transatlantic uncertainty also cuts the other way. Turkey likes to hedge and understands that Trump’s America is a risky player—and that Europe is a good hedge against US volatility. As Europe assumes more responsibility for its own defence and Washington becomes less predictable, Turkey’s military capacity, geography and defence industry become more valuable to Europeans. The result is mutual leverage rather than European dependence alone. Ankara has alternatives to Brussels, but Europe also has assets—market access, industrial integration, finance and regulation—that Washington cannot replace.

Integrate Turkey into European defence

This is where Turkish and European interests overlap most obviously. Europe is rearming; Turkey has factories, a fast-growing arms industry and capabilities relevant to Europe’s eastern and southern flanks. Excluding Turkey entirely from emerging defence-industrial arrangements would be self-defeating.

Yet that is roughly what has happened. In 2025, the EU launched its most ambitious defence effort to date—ReArm Europe, including SAFE, a €150bn joint-procurement instrument. SAFE is open in principle to candidate countries such as Turkey, but deeper participation requires a separate bilateral agreement with the EU, and Turkey has yet to conclude one. Cyprus and Greece have made clear that they view such access through the prism of their own security disputes with Ankara, and this is another way unresolved conflicts in the eastern Mediterranean constrain Europe’s ability to draw Turkey more deeply into its emerging defence architecture.

Turkey should be let in. Europe should use the linkage constructively: greater Turkish access to European defence programmes should accompany sustained de-escalation with Greece and progress on Cyprus, rather than being treated either as an unconditional entitlement or as a permanent exclusion.

EU institutions and member states should pursue this at different levels. The Commission and Council should create pathways for Turkish participation in EU-level defence instruments where political and security conditions are met. Meanwhile, individual member states should expand bilateral procurement, co-production and supply-chain partnerships with Turkish firms on a project-specific basis. Access should be conditional: tied to end-use guarantees, IP protection, sanctions compliance and limits on transferring jointly developed technology to third countries. Kept modular and reversible, such projects give Ankara a stake in interoperability and give Europe access to Turkish capacity without waving away its political and security concerns.

Modernise the customs union

Economic interdependence is Europe’s strongest lever and Turkey’s main reason to stay close. Yet the existing customs union is outdated and ill-suited to a world of supply chain fragmentation, US tariffs, Chinese overcapacity, digital trade and climate regulation. It covers goods and little else—no services, no digital trade, no public procurement and almost no agriculture—besides having weak dispute mechanisms.

Modernisation of the customs union should be at the centre of the Turkey-EU relationship. An expanded agreement would deepen supply-chain integration, attract investment, support green and digital transitions, and pull Turkish regulation closer to that of the EU. And by helping the EU’s industrial competitiveness, it would strengthen its hand against both China and America.

Modernisation should proceed in stages, with access to new sectors tied to measurable compliance and stronger dispute settlement. The objective is not more trade for its own sake. It is to make the dependence run in both directions.

Build coalitions in the neighbourhood

Turkey is now central to many crises in the Middle East, and there is room for Ankara and Brussels to work together more closely. But this does not have to be a single regional bargain. A more realistic model is a portfolio of issue-based coalitions.

In Iraq, both want stronger state institutions, better energy and transport links, reduced dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian-backed militias out of the military and politics. In Lebanon, both want functioning state institutions and reconstruction while containing escalation with Israel. In Libya and Somalia, maritime security, migration, energy and political stabilisation all provide areas for cooperation.

In the South Caucasus, Europe should continue to support Turkish-Armenian normalisation, the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process and the east-west transit corridor. On Iran, Ankara’s rivalry with Tehran and diplomatic access to it are useful: both Europe and Turkey want neither an Iranian hegemon nor an Iranian collapse.

Cooperate on migration

The 2016 migration deal reduced a complicated relationship to cash for border control, punctuated by political threats. Europe treats Turkey as a wall; Turkey periodically opens a door in it to make a point. This has delivered no more than short-term containment.

A more durable framework should distribute responsibilities more evenly between Turkey and Europe. It should combine joint border management with sustained refugee protection, greater EU financial support for Turkish municipalities and host communities and expanded resettlement from Turkey to EU member states. Any large-scale return to Syria should be voluntary and depend on improvements in security, housing, documentation, ability to earn a living and protection from persecution. Achieving that will require the EU to do more than simply leave returns for Turkey to manage: it should jointly monitor conditions on the ground, while helping finance reconstruction of civilian infrastructure Syria needs to improve those conditions.

The EU should also make legal travel easier for Turkish citizens: faster visa processing for students, academics, businesspeople, and families, alongside expanded educational and professional exchanges. The point is to replace money-for-containment with better mobility, giving Turkish citizens a reason to care about Europe while reducing Ankara’s ability to weaponise migration.

Make conditionality targeted, not existential

Managed interdependence cannot ignore Turkey’s authoritarian turn. Politicised courts, jailed political opponents and hollowed-out institutions render commercial deals less reliable and foreign policy less predictable.

But Europe’s response has often produced the opposite of what it intended. Keeping Turkey at political distance has not reversed democratic backsliding. It has instead weakened constituencies invested in European integration, reduced the EU’s influence over domestic reform and recast the relationship as an increasingly transactional exchange between governments. The lesson is not to abandon conditionality, but to use it more precisely and consistently.

Europe’s experience with Viktor Orban’s Hungary offers a partial lesson. It demonstrates the value of linking material benefits to specific institutional and rule-of-law conditions, and that different policy areas can be treated separately. But Turkey is not an EU member. It has an independent, regional presence, relationships beyond Europe and no obligation to submit to European courts. The EU’s leverage therefore is much narrower.

Conditionality should therefore be specific, proportionate and tied to the area of cooperation concerned. Instead of making the broader relationship contingent on an open-ended judgment about Turkey’s political trajectory, the EU should tie access to particular benefits to transparent and measurable commitments. Serious rule-of-law violations might affect access to EU financing or progress in areas requiring high levels of regulatory and judicial trust. Coercive actions abroad might trigger restrictions on particular defence-industrial partnerships or targeted measures against the individuals and entities responsible. Measures should have clearly defined triggers and, equally importantly, a clear route to reversal when the triggering behaviour stops.

This approach also requires distinguishing between the Turkish government and Turkish society. Measures intended to constrain the government should not unnecessarily restrict students, researchers, businesses, municipalities or civil society organisations whose interaction with Europe sustains the social foundations of the relationship. Visa access, academic cooperation, municipal partnerships and civil society programmes should therefore be insulated, as far as possible, from political disputes between Ankara and European governments.

Conditionality also has limits when disputes concern interests that Ankara defines as fundamental to sovereignty or national security. In such cases, increasing the cost of Turkish behaviour may signal European resolve without producing a change in policy. Conditionality works best when it creates incentives for a negotiated adjustment, not when it becomes a substitute for diplomacy. Europe therefore needs to pair credible costs with equally credible benefits and a political route back to cooperation.

Keep the accession question open

Managed interdependence is not a substitute for democracy, nor does it require pretending that Turkish accession is imminent. It is a framework for organising relations in the space between joining and walking away. But that raises the question of what should happen to Turkey’s candidate status. Three options are on the table.

Re-opening accession negotiations is unrealistic: the talks have been at a standstill since 2018 and there is neither consensus for a fresh start nor much value in pretending membership is approaching. Formally closing the process would be worse. It would remove one of the last institutional links between the two, weaken pro-European constituencies inside Turkey and make cooperation harder without resolving a single underlying dispute.

The better course is to leave candidate status legally intact but politically dormant and build the cooperation around it. However, the relationship should not be called a “privileged partnership”. This term, floated in some European capitals in the past, remains toxic in Turkey as Ankara sees it as a demotion that in practice would close the accession door forever. The substance is more important: a deep and differentiated partnership of managed interdependence that both sides have reason to maintain, with the formal question left open.

Turkey would remain outside the EU’s political core but get closer where interests align: NATO planning, Ukraine and Black Sea security, defence production, trade, energy, migration, mobility and Syria. In return, Europe would demand greater predictability, sanctions compliance, institutional accountability and adherence to agreed rules.

Disagreement would persist over Cyprus, the eastern Mediterranean, Israel, aspects of the regional order, and Turkey’s continued relations with Russia and China. Managed interdependence is not designed to erase those differences, but to prevent them from bringing down the wider structure of cooperation.

Europe’s choice is not between restoring the Turkey of the past and accepting permanent divergence. It is between an interdependence left hostage to crises and personal bargains, or one organised around common projects, reciprocal obligations and enforceable conditions. A successful strategy would give Turkey room to act as a middle power while making Western cooperation more valuable than the alternatives.

Neither home nor away

Over the past two decades, Turkey has gone from aspiring to regional influence to building the capabilities to exercise it—military deployments, overseas bases, defence exports, economic networks and diplomatic channels. The paradox is that much of this autonomy rests on continued integration with the West. Turkish embeddedness is the platform Turkish autonomy runs on. Ankara has learned to operate in the space between alliance and independence, sufficiently autonomous to shape regional crises, yet sufficiently embedded that the West cannot easily exclude it.

There are limits to this model. Turkey might be able to disrupt arrangements it opposes, but it has been less successful at building durable regional arrangements of its own. That asymmetry is the opening for Europe. A Turkey that can obstruct but not construct needs partners for what it wants to achieve—reconstruction money in Syria, advanced technology for its defence programmes and markets for its exports. Europe has been slow to use this leverage because it keeps looking for a different kind of relationship: an ally that agrees, or an adversary it can hold at arm’s length. Turkey is neither.

Europe needs to stop waiting. It should start using the interdependence that already exists around common projects and enforceable terms. This will not eliminate the contradictions at the heart of the relationship. It will instead turn those contradictions into a framework for bargaining, making cooperation possible without requiring alignment and disagreement manageable without producing rupture.

Acknowledgments 

We are grateful to Jana Puglierin and the Re:Order team at ECFR for encouraging us to take on this project and for helping shape the original idea, and to Angela Mehrer for her coordination throughout. Thanks also to Jeremy Cliffe and the ECFR publications team for their guidance on the initial proposal and outline, and to Nastassia Zenovich whose work on the maps was essential. We would also like to thank the many officials, experts and practitioners who shared their insights with us on an off-the-record basis; their perspectives informed the argument in important ways. Finally, we are especially grateful to Taisa Sganzerla for her thoughtful and incisive editing, which sharpened both the structure and the argument of the paper. 

About the authors

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş is an associate senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, where she also directs the Turkey Project. Before joining the foreign policy community, Aydintasbas had a long career in journalism, including writing a Global Opinions column for the Washington Post. She has covered wars in the Middle East and lived in New York and Istanbul, holding positions at Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, and CNN Turk. She is a regular commentator on the Middle East and Turkey and her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, among others. Her recent publications include “Turkey’s search for a new Middle East order” and “Turkey’s post-American hesitation” on the impact of the Iran war. She has also recently written “Here is how one country may have solved a violent uprising” and “Trump, don’t repeat Churchill’s mistake” for the New York Times. 

Evren Balta is a professor of international relations at Özyeğin University in Istanbul. She is also academic coordinator of the TÜSİAD Global Politics Forum, co-director of the Democracy Lab at Özyeğin University, a permanent member of the North South Futures Forum and a member of the Global Scholars Network on Identity and Conflict at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She is also affiliated with the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. She is the author or co-author of several books, including “The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism”, which received a Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She holds a PhD in political science from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, an MIA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and an MA in sociology from Middle East Technical University.

This paper is part of the Re:Order project and was made possible with support from Stiftung Mercator, but does not necessarily represent its view.

Source

Problem

The BRICS summit concluded in New Delhi on Sunday, with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi having hosted the two-day gathering as chair. As with many meetings of the group of emerging economies, this edition brought together the leaders of China, India and Russia and featured plenty of anti-Western rhetoric. This was also Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first visit to India for more than six years, in the latest example of Sino-Indian normalisation following a sustained period of tensions.

New Delhi’s normalisation with Beijing over the last year looks like more of a tactical de-escalation than a realignment. Nevertheless, India has over that time begun to agree more measures to provide greater access to Chinese investment in manufacturing and climate technology, both areas important for India’s development. This should act as a warning for Europeans. If India cannot source technology and capital from partners in Europe, it will seek to do so from China even while remaining suspicious of Beijing from a security point of view.

Solution

New Delhi continues to view Beijing as a threat and seeks deeper security and economic ties with Brussels, as well as with Washington, despite the difficulties President Donald Trump presents. Modi has thus worked to prevent the BRICS from tipping into a purely anti-Western vehicle, since this would run against India’s interests.

Europeans also see India as an increasingly vital partner, following the EU-India trade deal agreed earlier this year, as Europeans diversify geopolitically in the face of tense transatlantic relations. But India’s bilateral agreements with China, including on the sidelines of the BRICS meeting, show that the EU must not take the mutual benefits of closer ties for granted.

Ahead of Modi’s anticipated visit to Brussels later this year, the EU should accelerate its plans further to strengthen Europe-India ties. For instance, it should enhance the existing Trade and Technology Council to drive cooperation in areas like AI, while also moving forward cooperation on defence and security, and making faster progress on India’s plans to join the Horizon Europe funding programme for research and innovation.  

Context

The EU and India signed a landmark free-trade agreement in New Delhi in January, alongside a new security and defence partnership. Both sides aim to build on these with wider cooperation initiatives to encourage greater cooperation and investment in areas like semiconductors, AI and clean-tech supply chains.

India supported moves at the 2023 BRICS summit to agree on a major membership expansion. The group began as a much smaller coalition of just Brazil, Russia, India and China, and South Africa—hence “BRICS”—but has since grown to eleven members, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as a wider grouping of observer and partner countries that attend summits and align themselves loosely with the bloc’s agenda. The group is internally divided, and not just in terms of China and India. Both Iran and the UAE are members, for instance, despite longstanding regional tensions. This year’s summit produced a limited declaration including vague promises to enhance cooperation.

Source

Summary

• The Democrats could win big in the US midterm elections. This won’t matter much for constraining Trump, but it will start to establish what politics comes after him.
• Our research finds three camps of Democrats, all with different diagnoses of America’s problems: the revolutionaries see the system as unjust and needing structural change; the renovators see it as corrupt and needing reform; and the revivalists blame right-wing populism for breaking a system of bipartisan cooperation.
• What these camps see as broken in American domestic politics translates to how they view US foreign policy and Europe’s place in it.
• No matter which camp goes on to determine the future of Democratic foreign policy, it will be a far cry from the transatlanticism of previous Democratic administrations. This year’s midterm candidates have barely mentioned Europe, Russia or Ukraine in their campaigns.
• Europeans need to engage early and help shape their relationship with the party now, lest they be overlooked if and when Democrats do come to power.

What comes after Trump

This summer, the FIFA World Cup turned the world’s attention to America while America turned on much of the world. As Iran was due to play Egypt in Seattle, the US launched new strikes in its four-month war with the country. On semi-final day, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social an AI-doctored image of a map showing Canada, Greenland, Mexico and Venezuela covered with an American flag. And just days after Trump handed the World Cup trophy to the Spanish national team, his administration announced sweeping 10% baseline tariffs on 80 countries. The juxtaposition of tournament host and wartime belligerent reflects the position America now occupies in European strategic thinking: too central to ignore and too disruptive to rely on.

Europeans hoping that a midterm victory for Democrats in November will bring a reversal of this foreign policy should not hold their breath. If the party wins a majority of seats in one or both chambers of Congress—which is looking likely—they may be able to attach provisions to bills, launch investigations, issue subpoenas and lambast some of Trump’s poor foreign policy choices. But the second Trump administration has shown it will route around Congress and confront it with delays, hostility and vitriol, limiting any capacity for oversight. Having spent its first 18 months in power ignoring a friendly Republican Congress, one with a Democratic majority has even slimmer chances. In other words, little will change until the occupant of the White House does.

For now, the Democrats’ real power resides not in stopping the current administration but in shaping what comes next. Democratic candidates competing across the US—for both primaries and generals—have a wide ideological range, from “democratic socialists” to “centrists”. While they all heavily criticise Trump and his administration, they have different diagnoses for where the dysfunction began, what sustains it and what needs to be done about it. Engaged in party primaries across the country, Democratic candidates are putting forward competing answers to the two central questions Americans are asking themselves: “What went wrong?” and “How do we fix it?”  Based on these answers, we have identified that Democrats tend to cluster into three camps—the “revolutionaries”, the “renovators” and the “revivalists”—each with distinct proposals for the future of America.

The revolutionaries argue that the political and economic system that drives America has always been unjust and was built to concentrate wealth at the top. Therefore, the way to fix America is to enact large, structural change. The renovators argue that the democratic system of government was largely built to benefit all Americans but has been corrupted by money and captured interests. Their proposed remedy is to root out large-scale corruption, rebalancing the economic and political systems to the benefit of middle- and working-class Americans. The revivalists argue that increased partisanship, fuelled by Trump and the MAGA-aligned right, has divided the country and undermined the collaborative bipartisanship that is necessary for the functioning of the system and its institutions. They are focused on reinvigorating those institutions, reviving the post-war international order and rebuilding political bridges, all of which they see as the path back to peace and prosperity.  

The revolutionaries, renovators and revivalists are ideal types, not formal factions. They emerge from our analysis of over 50 high-profile Democratic primaries and general election campaigns throughout the 2026 midterm cycle. We also researched campaign platforms, stump speeches, debates and candidate interviews with local news, and interviewed various pundits, current and former staff, officials and pollsters in Washington. In doing so, we found that sorting candidates by their messages about the underlying cause of what has gone wrong in America proved to reliably predict how a candidate discusses domestic and global problems. For example, revolutionaries support Europe’s strategic autonomy but would dislike a Europe defined by militarisation and austerity; renovators see Europe as a potential partner on anti-corruption, taxation and democracy, as long as Europeans provide for their own security; and revivalists remain attached to the NATO alliance but are still unlikely to restore the old division of labour.

The ideological battles between Democrats will matter more than the arithmetic of the Senate or the House for the next two years. One of these three camps will lead the party’s ideological charge for the next presidential race, if not the next presidency. Leaders across Europe should not wait to see which will prevail. Rather, they should engage with these camps well before the presidential race gets under way. They may then be able to shape the thinking and policy proposals that Democrats put on the table between now and 2028, and beyond.  

The Democratic camps

Democrats—from New York democratic socialists to staunch Iowa moderates—have more in common than not. Practically everyone in the party believes Trump is a problem and that he and the MAGA movement have fundamentally changed American democracy for the worse. Many view widespread corruption as an issue and some say corruption is encouraged by the system itself.

But while the policy views of the three Democratic camps overlap, there are a few key points of difference. To illustrate these characteristics more clearly, this paper focuses on key individuals who have gained national attention, are running in close races, or are largely representative of what other ideologically aligned candidates say. It is rare for a candidate to be a perfect “revolutionary” or “revivalist” because they must answer to constituencies with divergent interests and disparate views of American and global affairs. Some candidates will even recognise themselves across different camps. Nevertheless, these three camps represent sensitivities that are bound to clash in the primaries until one of them breaks through and is championed by the 2028 Democratic nominee for president. Understanding them helps anticipate the direction of US policy in the brouhaha of its politics.

The revolutionaries maintain that the political and economic order in the US is functioning as designed: to serve concentrated wealth rather than the American people. The enemy, in revolutionaries’ rhetoric, is not necessarily any one person or party (such as Trump or the Republicans) but the economic and political system that consistently benefits the ruling class. Only a structural transformation of the system would finally make it work for the people.

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in his primary victory speech put the thesis as such: “It turns out that the reason so many of us ain’t got is because of the system that has corrupted our politics to take it away from us. That is the thing we are taking on now”. El-Sayed, who is a former public health official in Detroit, focuses his entire campaign on big structural goals: getting corporate money out of politics, and, like Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker, passing Medicare for All, a proposal for universal healthcare. Often revolutionaries’ critiques take a moral tone, such as when Senate candidate Angie Nixon of Florida talks about cruelty out of Washington, or denounces the “liars” and “cheaters” in office.

Because the revolutionaries diagnose the political system as in need of a complete overhaul, reforms aimed at constraining the actions of individuals miss the point. Their signature domestic proposals—nationalising big American corporations, adding seats on the Supreme Court, establishing Congressional term limits, overhauling campaign funding and raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy—aim to fundamentally change the US political system rather than simply elect better leaders.

Their theory of power follows: winning office is useful, but only insofar as it can be used to structurally change power dynamics between a ruling corporate class and average working Americans. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when asked about a potential run for president in 2028, responded: “My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, house seats, elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers’ rights are forever.”

On foreign policy, the revolutionaries argue that the current political system led America on an inevitable path of hyper-militarisation, threat inflation, an over-extension of its financial and human resources in military adventurism, and the reproduction of domestic systemic racism into foreign policy. They view the American relationship with Israel as the seminal example of everything wrong with this approach; Palestine being “one the great moral questions of our time” as New York congressional candidate Claire Valdez puts it.

Their diagnosis abroad is largely parallel to the one at home, viewing the pitfalls of US foreign policy as a metastasis caused by the American corporate class. As Valdez asserts:

“For decades, we have been sold a lie: that the US empire defends freedom, advances democracy, and protects human rights…In reality, the bipartisan war machine has delivered immense suffering around the world while doing little to improve the lives of working people here or abroad. The military-industrial complex doesn’t just enrich arms manufacturers—it has become our de facto industrial policy, sustaining enough jobs and political constituencies to make endless war challenging to stop.”

Their fixes to US foreign policy largely follow their domestic proposals: if you fix the system and its incentives for prioritising the financial gains of the wealthiest class, all else will follow.[1] This is rooted in banning corporate political action committee spending on campaigns which they believe will ultimately diminish the influence of defence contractors and foreign interest groups—namely the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC)—over candidates’ races, and therefore, diminish their influence on policy. In the short term, the revolutionaries aim to cut defence spending, bolster humanitarian aid and preference diplomacy in the American foreign policy toolkit. They also believe that the Biden administration’s foreign policy officials must be held accountable for continuing to supply Israel as its war on Gaza intensified.

Unsurprisingly, many in this camp represent overwhelmingly blue districts, call themselves “progressives” and some belong to the Democratic Socialists of America or the Working Family Party.

In these midterms, some of the revolutionary firebrands include Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker, Florida senate candidate Angie Nixon, Representative Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania, House candidates Melat Kiros in Colorado, and New York congressional candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier. Disgraced Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner also used that same rhetoric.

The renovators believe the system is imperfect, but largely worth keeping. In their view it has been co-opted and corrupted by money and corporate greed and upheld by a leadership class that is either corrupt themselves or out of answers. As James Talarico, Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, explains: “I think we’re living in an era of corruption, and I don’t just mean illegal activity… I’m talking about corruption in the deeper sense, the rotting of our systems from the inside out…” In his telling, strengthened by his moral standing as a middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, the issue with the American political system is not the institutions themselves, but the way in which they are weaponised and perverted.

While the revolutionaries name the ruling class as the enemy, the renovators see the villain as a narrower collection of groups who have captured institutions that were otherwise built to work for the American people. This distinction yields a different theory of power: with the right rules in place, the existing machinery can be trusted to function again. Therefore, instead of demolition, this group aims to renovate.

Senator Jon Ossoff spoke to this message at a campaign rally in June when he mused about what the founding fathers of America would see if they came to the US today:

“They’d see a pluralist democracy, people of all colours descended from every point on earth, stitched together from out of many nations into one. But they’d also see a nation, that at its height of wealth and power, fell into the very traps they most feared. Devouring itself in bitter conflict between warring factions, captured by special interests. And they’d see a faithless president exploiting this rot to pursue the absolute power they overthrew.”

House candidate Daniel Biss has voiced a similar critique, stating that: “While our families struggle to get ahead, politicians in Washington line their own pockets and special interests and wealthy donors flood our political system with money to protect their own power and access.”

Because renovators share the same anger towards an entrenched leadership class, the remedy they prescribe overlaps somewhat with that of the revolutionaries, including stock trading bans for Congress, term limits and campaign finance reform. However, the renovators are more likely to clean out and reform an agency—namely the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—that the revolutionaries would call to abolish. The renovators also view the Democratic party as a vehicle worth trying to steer rather than run against.

On foreign policy, the renovators argue that the same corruption that is eroding domestic institutions has been exported, and that this is primarily corroding America’s credibility. Ossoff made this connection explicit when he criticised the financial gains Jared Kushner has made while carrying out US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Senator Chris Murphy, a leader in this camp, has also described Trump’s acceptance of gifts and business arrangements from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as corruption with “no precedent in American history”. Thus, the fix renovators recommend is twofold: root out the graft of those currently running foreign policy so American leadership abroad can function as intended, and then fix the political system such that future administrations cannot replicate the corrupt schemes of the current one.

Renovators are spread across the country, from candidates in conservative states and districts such as Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas, Senator Jon Ossoff from Georgia, House candidates Sam Forstag of Montana, Manny Rutinel of Colorado, and Eric Jones of California. There is also a cluster of midwestern candidates including House candidate Daniel Biss from Illinois, Senate candidate Peggy Flannagan of Minnesota, and former Senator and current candidate Sherrod Brown from Ohio.

The revivalists are firm believers in American exceptionalism and credit American liberalism for the peace and prosperity of the past 80 years. They see Trump and the MAGA-aligned right as the primary threat to that inheritance and to American democracy and values more broadly.

Their diagnosis is that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement behind him have steeped the country in hyper-partisan vitriol and driven it into a spiral of polarisation. Revivalists argue that these divides drive dysfunction in Washington and make it impossible to worth within the political system. They often celebrate a prior era of bipartisanship and showcase their own capacity to work across the aisle.

Their theory of power follows from that diagnosis. Democrats must defeat Trump, the movement behind him and the polarisation that produced both. Then competent, experienced hands will make the system function as intended again. They believe collaborating with reasonable, non-MAGA Republicans to build bridges and pass longer-lasting legislation will show Americans how a working government can operate. In turn, they think a government that delivers will earn back trust on its own merits. Revivalist candidates centre their electoral pitches around defeating Trump, restoring institutional norms and bipartisan collaboration. Senator Chris Coons, who is running for re-election in Delaware, made an appeal to voters saying as much:

“At some point [Trump’s] chaos, corruption, and cruelty will come to an end. And a lot of work will be needed to pick up the pieces, to clean up the mess he’s made, to fix a system that’s still broken and not delivering results for the folks I serve in Delaware. I’m running for reelection because the job’s not done.”

Coons emphasises the damage that Trump has caused and his desire to restore normality to the halls of Congress. Additionally, many revivalists stand closest to the Democratic party leadership and often treat experience as a credential rather than a liability. In her unsuccessful race for Michigan’s Senate seat, Congresswoman Haley Stevens emphasised her time in the Obama administration, for example, and Roy Cooper spotlights his accomplishments as evidence of his policy chops from his time as North Carolina’s governor.

On foreign policy, the revivalists argue that American military alliances, trade relationships and institutions are integral pieces of the liberal world order. In their view, the post-war structures are worth defending, US leadership is needed and Trump’s destruction of these institutions is actively harming American global power. They mostly believe that the backlash against these institutions, whether it be NATO or the WTO, is a failure of messaging. Americans were never told what the post-war order gave them, so they have had no reason to defend it.[2]

Where revivalists identify a problem abroad, they frame it as they frame problems at home: the result of a specific bad actor’s conduct or of partisan divisions. For example, they blame Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for their countries’ strained relationships with the US. Change the leadership and you can restore the relationship, which is an argument for patience both at home and abroad. They argue too that foreign adversaries purposely widen American divisions, and that Americans should fight back by recognising those efforts and working across the aisle, a case New York representative Tom Suozzi made recently during a hearing on foreign influence:

“The biggest factor causing division in our country is our foreign adversaries…They are feeding division in our country. They cannot defeat us economically. They cannot defeat us militarily. So they want to take what they see as being our biggest weakness which is our diversity. And they fuel dissent in our country…”

Revivalists comprise the largest cross-section of the party and are represented from coast-to-coast, including Senator Chris Coons from Delaware, Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, Senator John Hickenlooper from Colorado, Representative Tom Suozzi from New York, Representative Maggie Goodlander from New Hampshire, Senate candidate Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Senate candidate Roy Cooper from North Carolina, House candidate Rebecca Cooke from Wisconsin, former Senate candidates Janet Mills from Maine and Angie Craig from Minnesota.

The five foreign policy issues

Primaries have at times led to tense disputes among Democrats. When it comes to foreign policy, our analysis shows where the camps divide on five key issues that will matter to Europeans: affordability and trade; the use of military force; China and great power competition; Israel; and Europe and European security.

1. Affordability and trade

Since Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral victory in November 2025, affordability has defined this election cycle’s messaging. Candidates across the board focus on policies that would help the affordability crisis and frame other issues as perpetuating it.[3] The focus is so singular that the headline messages are often interchangeable across the party: Abdul El-Sayed is running for “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all” while Roy Cooper’s prevailing message is “Make stuff cost less.”

In terms of foreign policy, trade is affordability gone global. And as all Democratic candidates see it, Trump’s tariffs raise the price for Americans while enriching himself and his allies. But this consensus is an objection to these specific tariffs, not to all tariffs.

Revolutionaries remain sceptical of the old free-trade order itself: Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez at the Munich Security Conference called for “a recognition of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] as a failed policy for many rural and working class communities,” and Abdul El-Sayed called NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership a disaster for the American worker. Moreover, this camp sees small, strategic tariffs as legitimate tools of job protection.

Renovators, on the other hand, believe current trade agreements can be improved. Senator Jon Ossoff, for example, sent a letter to the Trump administration urging them to use the US-Mexico-Canada agreement (USMCA) review to police Mexican labour and environmental practices to ensure American growers have a chance to compete fairly on the global market.

Revivalists remain closely aligned to the old free-trade consensus. In April of this year, for example, senators in this camp asked the US trade representative to “strengthen and renew” the USMCA. They believe that trade tools like tariffs or export controls should only be used for national security issues, akin to the “small-yard, high-fence” policies of the Biden administration. Amid the Trump administration’s trade wars, they suggest focusing on a narrow trade agenda that directly serves the interests of both sides, such as deals on critical minerals, new technologies or other pieces of critical supply chains.

2. The use of military force

America’s two latest military operations—Trump’s war in Iran and the operation to remove Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—have sparked debate among Democrats over what role the US military should play in foreign policy. Nearly every Democrat criticised the Iran war and many voiced reservations about Venezuela, but the extent to which Democrats are comfortable using the military as a foreign policy tool differs.

Revolutionaries read Trump’s use of force in Iran and Venezuela as a natural continuation of an overly militarised foreign policy and advocate for that to change. El-Sayed called the Iran war “dumb and illegal”, but argued that the real issue was the cost of a war America did not need to fight. Colorado’s Melat Kiros makes this structural claim directly, “It’s time to reimagine our global role: not as a militarised empire, but as a champion of diplomacy, human rights, and peacebuilding. We need to end the blank checks for endless war and reallocate that funding towards diplomacy abroad and housing, education, and healthcare here at home.” New York candidate for congress Darializa Avila Chevalier puts it similarly.

The revolutionaries, if in office, would work to cut the military budget broadly in the name of keeping the money at home. For them, the deeper fix to a foreign policy driven mainly by military action is upstream: end the corporate and defence contractor lobbies that supports these wars in the first place.

The renovators view the most recent use of force as domestic corruption running through foreign policy. They are not necessarily opposed to using military force, but uncomfortable with the corrupt forces that push the military to be a tool of first resort. Chris Murphy’s office headlined his remarks on the money: “This president’s foreign policy, the invasion of Venezuela, the ouster of Maduro, is about making his crowd filthy rich. It has nothing to do with American national security.”

James Talarico likewise described the transaction as follows: “Trump promised the biggest oil executives in this country a ‘great deal’ if they gave him a billion dollars for his re-election campaign, and then he turned around and gave them a gift. He gave them the nation of Venezuela, home to the largest oil reserves in the world. Billionaires don’t just run our economy. They don’t just run our government. Now they run our foreign policy.” Corruption, in this telling, drives how Trump uses force. As with domestic concerns, the way to “fix” the incentives to use military force is largely the same as the revolutionaries: reign in defence contractor graft, lobbying and campaign spending.

Revivalists press hardest on legality and cost, but the argument underneath is about what these operations do to America’s standing in the world. Chris Coons admonished the administration’s decision to launch strikes on Iran in February for their method and legality: “President Trump’s military campaign against Iran and call for regime change are the beginning of a reckless new war of choice with no clear strategy and no clear endpoint. This is not how a democracy goes to war.”

Revivalists levelled similar critiques at the military operation in Venezuela. Representative Maggie Goodlander responded to the capture of Maduro by asking: “What is the legal justification for such an action? The US Constitution entrusts the US Congress with war powers for very good reasons. The Trump Administration must immediately and truthfully answer questions about the motivation and legality of this unilateral military action, the potential for any further escalation, and the plan for peace.”

For this camp, how a country goes to war is a sign of its strength. Authorisation, a stated objective, and allies consulted in advance are what gives a war public support and partners willing to help in the effort. According to revivalists, a democracy that goes to war via unilateral decision is weaker afterward, because that decision erodes the constitutional system of checks and balances. So, Trump’s lack of consultation widens a divide between Republicans and Democrats, between the branches of government and diminishes the public image of the US military.

3. China and great power competition

China is generally understood by all on the left as a strategic challenge. Yet Democrats disagree on just how big the threat is, whether to commit troops to the defence of Taiwan, and just how much the US should orient its economic and security policy around the strategic competition with China.

Revolutionaries fear a full-throated strategic competition with China would subvert domestic priorities. When Ocasio-Cortez was asked at the Munich Security Conference if she would commit to sending US troops to defend Taiwan, she said: “We want to make sure we never get to that point and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic, research, and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation.”

This camp’s scepticism of the use of force and relentless focus on domestic framing is clearly seen when hot-button issues in the strategic competition discussion arise. For example, this camp would rather support limits on AI development to protect jobs, workers and the environment, than to push forward on AI research in order to compete with China. Likewise, they are more likely to focus the conversation of US-China strategic competition on manufacturing gaps, lags in research and education and trade deficits, thus bringing the focus back to the working class and economic issues.

At the other end, revivalists treat China as the defining national security issue and, therefore, AI, space and weapon development are part of an arms race that the US must win. All tools are on the table, whether it be an export-control regime, import controls on Chinese electric vehicles, sanctions on Chinese Communist Party officials or even bans on TikTok.

Renovators sit in the middle. Hawkish enough to want to compete but unwilling to let strategic competition swallow the agenda. They are focused on economic fairness with China and competing beyond military means alone, but also willing to place domestic guardrails on AI and the tech race. They believe competition is important, but that it should not overtake all domestic needs. For example, they would advocate for the need for data centres to be energy and water self-sufficient, or even call for moratoriums on data centres, even if that threatens frontier model development.

4. Israel

Israel is where the three camps separate most cleanly along a single question: what, if anything, should America sell or give to Israel?

This is a central issue for the revolutionaries, who maintain that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide. This camp has concluded that conditioning aid to Israel, the previous progressive position, is no longer a viable measure to ensure any meaningful end to the conflict or long-term peace. Their preferred policy is a full arms embargo on Israel, including defensive systems.

This distinction has already defined a few primary elections. New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the congressional primary against Representative Adriano Espaillat, ran on “babies not bombs”, promising to vote to halt arms sales to Israel. Melat Kiros, who unseated nearly-30-year incumbent Diana DeGette in Colorado, called for a full arms embargo to Israel and closed her victory speech leading a “Free Palestine” chant. El-Sayed takes this same position: “I support an immediate arms embargo on Israel and reject the false differentiation between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ weapons.”

The renovators often make that distinction and are primarily focused on the need for change in the US-Israel relationship. Their belief that the system must be reformed is clearly reflected in their positions towards Israel. James Talarico, for example, has said he would work to ban the sale of offensive military weapons to Israel while still supporting Israel’s defensive systems. Talarico has declined to call it a genocide but has called the destruction in Gaza a “moral disaster”. Senator Jon Ossoff similarly told constituents that he voted against sending rifles to Israel because of the “extreme mass deprivation of civilians in Gaza”, and defended his vote for air-to-ground missiles because of Israel’s need to be able “to strike those who would launch missiles and rockets at Israeli civilians.” Senator Murphy, likewise, voted with Bernie Sanders’s resolution disapproving of the sale of offensive weapons in 2024, but has since moved even further, calling for a halt of US military aid altogether. But most in this camp have stopped short of demanding a total embargo. Instead, they try to thread the needle between respecting America’s long-standing special relationship with Israel and combatting the structure that has allowed Israel’s abuse of military force.

Revivalists support the US-Israel relationship but blame the two leaders, Trump and Netanyahu, for souring the once-mutually beneficial of defence relationship. In their view, Netanyahu and Trump’s actions have exacerbated US public opinion of the relationship, rather than the structure of the relationship itself. Chris Coons has reiterated that his “commitment to Israel remains ironclad” while directly placing the blame on Netanyahu for the declining American sentiment towards the country. Similarly, Representative Chris Pappas, running for Senate in New Hampshire, articulates support for Israel and criticism of Netanyahu’s government. Roy Cooper, meanwhile, has flatly rejected efforts to block aid to Israel.

The revivalists’ view on America’s relationship with Israel is perhaps best expressed in Chuck Schumer’s March 2024 Senate floor speech, where he called Netanyahu “an obstacle to peace” who has “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” In other words, just as Trump and the rise of the MAGA right have degraded the American political system, Netanyahu and the far-right in Israel have degraded the US-Israel relationship. The solution, then, is to try to change the behaviour of Netanyahu since they cannot change that he and Trump are in power. Therefore, this camp tends to treat US-Israel arms sales on a case-by-case basis, usually agreeing to send weapons, but reserving the right to condition those arm sales based on how Israel uses them. As Governor Janet Mills, who failed to win the Democratic primary for Maine’s Senate, said while criticising Netanyahu’s conduct she would evaluate any bill to halt arms shipments “on the specifics.”

5. Europe and European security

Nearly all Democrats see the value of the transatlantic relationship beyond the Trump administration’s idea of a “shared cultural heritage”. For the president, this is often a thinly veiled way to value the continent for its whiteness and colonial past and lambast it when he sees this as changing. Democrats, on the other hand, value the relationship for its shared rules and norms—whether these are liberal internationalism or workers’ rights.

A Democratic congressional majority will certainly not have the same disdain for Europe as many in the Trump administration do, but the Democratic party is certain to present its challenges. Some in the Democratic coalition would like to see a renewed American role in NATO, for example, while others want a European partner that can stand on its own. One challenge is for certain: the US-European relationship will be on the back burner. In the midterm campaigns you would be hard pressed to find a single Democratic candidate talking about the transatlantic relationship with voters.

Ukraine

On the war in Ukraine, all camps are firmly behind Kyiv but divide over the specifics of what America should do in support. Revolutionaries are wary of a militarised US foreign policy and an economic statecraft whose costs fall to the American taxpayers. Leaders in this camp voted against seizing Russian oligarch’s assets in 2022, and signed, then retracted, a 2022 letter urging Biden to use negotiation and diplomacy. Much of the motivation to write that letter four years ago still exists within this camp today.[4]

The revolutionaries are most eager to push for peace and they remain somewhat doubtful that additional weapons for Ukraine benefit Americans, viewing an open-ended war as another entry in the long book of American over-extension. However, they are not outright against supporting Ukraine. Even Abdul El-Sayed, who was extremely vocal against sending weapons to Israel, said: “When it comes to Ukraine, I think we are involved in a righteous struggle from being invaded by their neighbour.”

Those in the renovator and revivalist camps both support Ukraine’s independence and the use of American military aid to secure it with varying intensity. Their divergence is on the use of sanctions on Russia. Renovators Chris Murphy and Jon Ossoff expressed some scepticism of the efficacy and knock-on effects of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, which would authorise an increase of tariffs up to 100% for the top-five foreign purchasers of Russian energy supplies. Murphy ultimately voted for the bill, and Ossoff against. Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, both revivalists, on the other hand, vocally supported the bill from the beginning. These are arguments about how much to spend and how hard to squeeze, not about whether Ukraine should survive. The sharper disparities appear when the question turns from the war to the US-European relationship itself.

US-European relationship

Revolutionaries are interested in a transatlantic relationship that is not centred around NATO or any military alliance. As revolutionaries believe in creating an American foreign policy that is not solely centred on military force, they also see that as a goal in the European context. Hence, they accept European strategic autonomy and might even welcome it. They are the camp most open to structural boldness and the least likely to campaign for returning any troops Trump withdraws from the continent. This camp has shown a proclivity for supporting a move towards burden-shifting, but are sceptical of a European relationship achieved only through rearmament.[5] Rather, they will seek an affirmative agenda as sketched by Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Jason Crow at the 2026 Munich Security Conference: a new transatlantic relationship re-centred on combatting authoritarianism on both continents and advancing labour standards, rather than one singularly obsessed with NATO and continued US security commitments.

Renovators would likely treat Europeans first and foremost as partners on the agenda they care about—corruption, taxation and democratic resilience.[6] They would also push for Europe to continue to take an increased responsibility for its own security. Murphy explained as much during a Senate foreign relations subcommittee hearing in September 2025: “I believe in that NATO treaty, I believe in Article 5, but I also think it is absolutely time for the members of NATO on the other side of the Atlantic to take more responsibility for their collective defence.” The renovators are therefore keen on the idea of increased burden-sharing within NATO since they often view foreign policy issues through the lens of “where is the money going?” Correspondingly they view European governments as natural allies in the pursuit of tax enforcements, financial transparency, AI and digital platform regulation.

Revivalists remain the most attached to the alliance and the most likely to defend NATO. Coons released a joint statement with Senator Mitch McConnell in April of 2026 reaffirming their support for the alliance: “Americans are safer when NATO is strong and united. It is in our interest for all allies to tend this unity with care…The Senate will continue to support the alliance for the peace and protection it provides America, Europe, and the world.” The revivalists also credit European allies with responding to American pressure by committing 5% of GDP to military spending, and with this they treat burden sharing as a question already answered.

Any structural change, in their eyes, is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive to continued US leadership. Rather, they see European rearmament as vindication of the alliance and reason for the US to stay committed. Even if the old division of labour and spending is not coming back, they would restore the old processes within the alliance: consultation before decisions, allies told in advance and an obligation to commitments.[7]

The uncertain road ahead

It is too early to know which of the three camps will be the most successful with voters. Democratic primaries in the spring and summer 2026 have offered mixed lessons. Quite a few revolutionary firebrands, such as Abdul El-Sayed and Angie Nixon, have won their primaries in widely covered upset victories. Meanwhile, some renovators like Jon Ossoff and James Talarico are running particularly strong campaigns while revivalists continue to fare strongly across the board. In other words, Europeans could be facing any of the foreign policy positions described above, and should engage with all three camps long before the American public decides which should come out in front.

Recommendations for Europe

Trump’s frenzy of disruptions too often clouds European judgement on long-term evolutions. If Democrats return to power, they will not revert to “back to normal”. Instead, Europeans need to engage with them on a new agenda; whether they be a far cry from the previous Democratic administration, like the revolutionaries, or a fair bit closer, like the revivalists. To anticipate what they may be dealing with in less than three years, Europeans should engage with all Democrats—from the familiar to the uncomfortable—even when disagreements abound, and start thinking of a common agenda to help shape Democratic policy while it is still being formed.

Expect the unexpected

European governments took a long time to accept that MAGA is durable and not a deviation from the norm. To be better prepared this time around, the debates on the American left deserve early attention, especially as they too could cause surprises. The populist energy emanating from the revolutionaries may prove to be a winning electoral strategy for Democrats in the midterms, and could well be mobilised by the next presidential candidate.

One thing is for certain: the Democratic party has entered a post-Obama, post-Biden era where questions over leadership mark more than a change of personnel. They signal the passing of the generation shaped by the Iraq war, the global financial crisis, the rise of ISIS and the return of great-power rivalry with Russia and China. Strategic competition with China is no longer the modus operandi as it was under Biden. International trade is no longer taken as an unqualified good. The American left is not returning to the internationalism of the 2010s. A new cohort of Democratic leaders is emerging with different political instincts and foreign-policy priorities.

Many Democrats no longer see the transatlantic relationship as an inheritance that they have a duty to preserve. If and when they return to power, their expectations of burden-sharing will have hardened, historical attachment to the Atlantic alliance will have faded and Europe will no longer occupy the central place it once did in Democratic foreign policy debates. Younger Democrats in particular approach alliances through the lens of effectiveness and narrow shared interests and values, rather than a long-standing historical solidarity. Europeans need to pay attention to the debates taking place inside the Democratic party in order to engage the party of tomorrow.

Engage with every Democrat

As Europeans navigate the new American left, the biggest hurdle they will face is that they are increasingly viewed as at best as irrelevant and at worst as complicit. Europeans are not the focus of any of the three camps’ foreign policies. In fact, throughout our analysis, Europe was hardly mentioned in any television interviews, stump speeches or posts on X. Even the war in Ukraine and Russia’s hybrid challenges have lost prevalence in foreign policy debates consumed with China, Iran, Israel and Venezuela, to name a few.

When they do pay attention to Europe, Democrats across the board are beginning to regard European leaders who have spent nearly two years currying Trump’s favour as part of the problem—whether that is because Democrats view them through the lens of upholding an oligarchy, enabling gross corruption or being pathetic in the face of a global bully. Even if European leaders are pragmatically flattering the president with paternal references or golf rounds, they should remember that there are still a lot of democrats (not the party, the philosophy) on the other side of the Atlantic who would like to see in Europeans a standard-bearer and not an enabler.

Likewise, behind closed doors European leaders espouse a disappointment in Democratic politicians for losing to Trump twice and failing to put up decent opposition so far.[8] Democrats, too, are acting pragmatically. The options they currently have to mount a significant opposition are few and ineffective.

Which is all to say, engagement and re-building bridges across the left now will be essential for building a transatlantic relationship fit for the post-Trump world. European leaders and all three camps want America to play a constructive, trusted and peaceful role in the world—they just differ on what exactly that looks like.

In particular, Europeans have to start meeting and engaging with revolutionaries, even if their positions appear furthest outside the norm. This camp, for its provocations and innovation, is feeding most of the political conversation and fires up the base. Engagement would make Europe’s concerns and assets more prevalent to their thinking, while ignoring them only guarantees tension if they come to power.

Shape the next transatlantic agenda

As Democrats are not paying any attention to Europe, the burden of revitalising the transatlantic relationship lies with Europeans. There are significant areas—like tech regulation, corruption reform, taxation, trade and security—where European leaders will find partners in the American left if they so choose. They should not be surprised, however, if they must make the first move. Indeed, if Democrats win the midterms, the next two years will see Trump weak and the Democrats not yet strong. In that time, no policy idea will come from Washington that imagines the future of collaborations with Europe. It is up to Europeans to propose them.

Europeans’ experience of the Biden administration illustrates why relying on American leadership is insufficient. Although Biden championed alliances rhetorically, several defining decisions were taken with limited European consultation. The Inflation Reduction Act prioritised domestic reindustrialisation through measures many Europeans regarded as discriminatory. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was poorly coordinated with allies. The AUKUS agreement advanced Indo-Pacific strategy but came at the expense of French interests. These episodes reflected a broader shift towards a US that increasingly pursues its strategic objectives unilaterally, even under an avowedly pro-NATO administration. Europeans’ continued acquiescence towards the Trump administration has only made unilateral foreign policy more appealing.

To avoid facing a Democratic majority which operates alone, Europeans must think through what they would like to propose to Democrats. That agenda should be capable of appealing across the Democratic coalition, from revolutionaries to renovators to revivalists.

In setting an agenda, Europeans should connect with Democrats from all three camps, but there are specific opportunities to build stronger coalitions with the camps that are naturally aligned with European interests. For example, on Israel policy and a new US role in the Middle East, the revolutionaries and the renovators could find alignment with many European governments. On a framework for competing with China and derisking, Europeans should collaborate with renovators and revivalists. All three camps will be in favour of a rebalanced NATO, but should Europeans seek more structural changes, they would find allies in the renovator and revolutionary camps. On all issues, Europeans should make the case that they can be a practical partner in solving some of the international problems around which the next Democratic coalition will organise itself. In so doing, Europeans and the US Democrats can build a new, more balanced and stable alliance.

A renewed transatlantic programme should therefore include:

• A “fair trade” agenda that combines openness with stronger labour protections, coordinates responses to Chinese industrial overcapacity, establishes minimum wage requirements and climate standards. All three camps could be interested in such an agenda: revivalists for competitiveness, renovators for reestablishing ethical rules and revolutionaries for climate and labour rights progress. For Europeans, it is important to move away from the logic of indiscriminate tariffs and negotiated exemptions. Instead they should put forward a logic of fair competition and sustainable industrial development on both sides. The European Commission should start by identifying partners with whom to discuss these goals.
• A joint framework for AI that strengthens consumer protections, ensures fair taxation of digital platforms, promotes open access to AI for public goods such as healthcare and education, and aligns technological innovation with climate objectives. The renovators would be most in favour of such a proposal, and elements of the revolutionaries and revivalists would be a natural coalition. France, which promotes international cooperation for responsible AI governance, as well as Britain, which will host the G7 in 2028, should reach out to Democrats interested in tackling the issue and working on a regulatory framework for AI and other technologies.
• A rebalanced NATO in which European allies assume greater responsibility for force generation, command structures and regional deterrence, allowing the US to reduce its military footprint without weakening collective defence. All three camps would find favour in stronger European allies, although revivalists are probably more comfortable in the conversation. Nevertheless, Europeans should also spend time engaging with revolutionaries and renovators, who do not see the same value in alliances, and show that collective defence can be cost-effective and a guarantee of long-term security. Transatlanticist networks in staunch US allies such as Germany, the Netherlands or Poland should start suggesting concrete transformations of the alliance to be discussed with Democrats.
• A substantial expansion of transatlantic educational, research and cultural exchanges, including easier access to European universities for American students, expanded researcher mobility and new funding for joint academic networks. Revivalists would applaud a greater cultural exchange and such a vision for renewed American leadership. Revolutionaries and renovators would also welcome the opportunity to centre education, research and culture in the transatlantic relationship, rather than military. The EU could help promote such a “Community of friendship for Europeans and Americans”, which a lot of Europeans may embrace, that de-emphasises trade and defence as the only pillars of the transatlantic relationship, and put democracy, innovation and human rights at the centre. Such an initiative would, above all, help cushion Europe’s fall towards irrelevance on the American left.

These proposals would resonate differently across the Democratic coalition. Revivalists would view them as a means of modernising American leadership rather than abandoning it. Renovators could see them as evidence that Europe is assuming greater responsibility for its own security while contributing to domestic American priorities on labour, industrial policy and technological governance. Revolutionaries may find opportunities to advance an ambitious climate and social agenda beyond their shores. In all cases, the objective should be the same: demonstrate that Europe can be an asset rather than a burden for the next generation of Democratic policymakers.

Methodology

The revolutionaries, renovators, and revivalists are ideal types that emerged from our analysis of 42 high-profile Democratic primaries and general election campaigns throughout the 2026 midterm cycle and of 63 individual Democratic candidates. We exhaustively researched campaign platforms, stump speeches, debates and candidate interviews with local news, and interviewed various pundits, current and former staff, officials and pollsters in Washington DC from April to August 2026.

The Democratic primary races and candidates studied include: Senate races in Alaksa, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas; Governor races in Iowa, New Jersey, Virginia and Wisconsin; and Congressional races in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

About the authors

Célia Belin is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and head of its Paris office. Her research focuses on transatlantic relations.

Chris Herrmann is the US programme coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on US domestic and foreign policy and the transatlantic relationship.

Nevada Joan Lee is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in the Washington office. Her research focuses on European security and defence, US foreign policy, the transatlantic relationship and NATO.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the many people who helped with this paper. First and foremost, thank you to all the Democratic politicians, staffers, pollsters and pundits who met with us for our research. A big thanks to Portia Kentish, whose thoughtful and thorough editing greatly sharpened the piece. Jeremy Shapiro and Jim O’Brien provided sage wisdom and multiple rounds of considered feedback. Majda Ruge offered generous comments and advice on earlier drafts. Chris Eichberger gave this piece its visual life through his extraordinary visuals. Martin Tenev worked tirelessly to bring the paper to its final form—life on the web.

---

[1]  ECFR conversations with current and former progressive congressional staffers, Washington DC, July and August 2026

[2] Author’s conversations with congressional staffers, Washington DC, July 2026

[3] ECFR conversation with Democratic pollsters, Online, May 2026

[4] Conversations with progressive and moderate Democratic congressional staffers, Washington DC, July 2026

[5] ECFR Conversation with former and current progressive congressional staff, Washington DC, July and August 2026

[6] Authors’ conversations with politicians, March 2026, Washington DC and conversation with Tim Walz, ECFR annual council meeting, Vienna, June 2026

[7] Author’s conversations with congressional staffers, Washington DC, July 2026

[8] ECFR private workshop with European officials, Berlin, February 2026

Source

Emma Bonino understood early on that Europe could not afford to turn inwards. For her, Europe was meant to be much more than a common market. She believed that Europe’s role in the world was inseparable from its defence of freedom, democracy and human rights, and that its foreign policy was ultimately about the people behind the decisions made by states. She also helped make European politics a wider space for women, opening paths and challenging expectations along the way. Her legacy is not only in the causes she championed, but in the courage with which she pursued them. The voices of women like Emma, who always fought for our rights, mattered enormously in shaping the Europe we know today. At a time when that Europe is being tested once again, and when civil liberties can no longer be taken for granted, her example matters more than ever.

Source

Despite her diminutive stature, Emma Bonino was a giant of European foreign policy. She made a critical difference on a bewildering range of causes. She was a master at operating in a diverse array of settings: protesting on the streets, mobilising NGOs, shaping the agenda of the European Commission, creating unlikely coalitions in the European Parliament and chairing the Italian Senate. She managed to make such a difference in all these places because, wherever she found herself, she was always an activist fighting for civil rights, for justice, for equality.

Emma was also a rebel. She used her charm, humour and honesty to puncture pomposity and force people into a real conversation. She embraced controversy, both in her advocacy for challenging causes like women’s rights, abortion access and drug legalisation, and in her methods such as protests and hunger strikes. 

She knew how to translate lofty goals into concrete steps which had some hope of being implemented, whether it was setting up the European Commission’s humanitarian office, campaigning for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, advocating to ban female genital mutilation, or working to change Italian electoral law. She had a sense of history and understood how to use crises to shift the agenda—as she did when she moved to Cairo after 9/11, deciding to learn Arabic and to push for a better understanding between Europeans and the Muslim world. And she was willing to assemble and work with unlikely coalitions to advance her causes, from joint projects with the Egyptian former president’s wife Mrs Mubarak to campaigns with the Pope.   

Emma was a founding member of ECFR and helped turn it into the organisation it has become. We assumed when she became Italian foreign minister in 2013 that she would step down as a member, but instead she wanted to stay involved and constantly drew on ECFR’s ideas, expertise and pan-European networks to shape the Italian and European agenda. When she stepped down as foreign minister she became a co-chair of the organisation, and we felt her sense of urgency, ambition and pro-Europeanism in every board meeting. 

Emma helped shape the DNA of ECFR. She encouraged us to be courageous, not to be afraid of controversy and to challenge conventional wisdom. She pushed us to be as pragmatic about how to make a difference as we were principled about our goals. Always inspiring others, Emma was a friend and a role model to so many of us—but she didn’t do small talk or make time for idle fun. When the substantive discussions were finished, she would say “va bene” and move on to the next fight (or go out to smoke a cigarette). Her death leaves Europe a greyer and less vital place. We need more Emmas.  

---

A message from ECFR’s Rome office in memory of Emma Bonino

• Teresa Coratella, Arturo Varvelli
• Obituary
• 11 September 2026

We are deeply saddened to share the news of Emma Bonino’s passing

ECFR council members pay tribute to Emma Bonino

• ECFR Council members
• Obituary
• View from the Council
• 16 September 2026

Messages in memory of Emma Bonino from ECFR’s council members

Source

On September 30th, the European Commission is expected to unveil a comprehensive document on EU enlargement, which will be used as a basis for discussion by the European Council in October. The paper is likely to confirm that Montenegro and Albania could finish negotiations soon. But it should also propose ideas on how other countries in the region without this perspective can move forward in their own EU accession journeys.

Any Western Balkan country that joins the EU after waiting over 20 years deserves to be celebrated; the two frontrunners should be commended for making best use of this opportunity and supported to make it over the finish line. But by focusing on these two countries, the EU has prioritised quick wins. Montenegro and Albania have demonstrated commitment to reform, but also have no major bilateral issues to resolve or difficult neighbours to reconcile with.

Montenegro in particular, given its small size and its lack of significant outstanding issues with neighbours, seems ideal for making the case for enlargement as a low-cost and problem-free geopolitical gain. Indeed, commission officials recently compared the annual cost of Montenegro’s entry to the EU per EU citizen to that of a cup of coffee. 

However, going for low-hanging fruit must not serve as cover for the EU not achieving its core responsibility in the Western Balkans. It should use its leverage to promote reform and the resolution of bilateral issues, thereby strengthening stability in a region still struggling to overcome its difficult past. The recent funeral of convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic demonstrates how important this task remains: the presence of senior Serbian state representatives at his commemoration has caused shock and dismay across the region and within the EU, as well as among many Serbian citizens.

A regional perspective  

At the end of the wars of the 1990s, the EU adopted a regional framework towards the Western Balkans. The idea was simple and appealing: improving relations between the Western Balkan countries would go hand in hand with closer ties to the EU. Two decades on, this had led to many challenges and some successes, but only Croatia has become a fully fledged EU member state. While the stagnation in the enlargement process is partly due to a lack of commitment from regional governments, it is also a result of internal EU blockages and a lack of urgency while it dealt with a series of pressing crises.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, enlargement suddenly became a priority again. The EU understood that it needed to prevent a grey area emerging between itself and Russia. Ukraine and Moldova obtaining candidate status in 2022 revived member-state interest in the dormant case of the Western Balkans enlargement process; Montenegro and Albania recognised the geopolitical opportunity, accelerated their reform efforts and have arrived at a point where EU accession is a realistic possibility.

But the main impetus for this new momentum towards enlargement is dramatically different from what originally drove Western Balkans integration. While the eventual integration of Ukraine and Moldova into the EU aims to strengthen European defences in the face of a common threat, Western Balkan enlargement was meant to foster regional stability and reconciliation among countries that had been at war with each other.

The successful accession of a Western Balkan country may signal to the rest of the region that EU membership is possible and that enlargement is truly a merit-based process, which rewards those advancing reform and making the right geopolitical choices. However, neither the EU nor the Western Balkans can ignore the fact that Kosovo is stuck due to unresolved status issues, Bosnia and Herzegovina carries the burden of a dysfunctional constitution imposed by the international community and North Macedonia is held back by bilateral issues with its EU neighbours.

Focusing on the countries facing fewest obstacles to accession might suit the geopolitical needs of the moment, but it risks losing sight of the original regional dimension of Western Balkans enlargement

Focusing on the countries facing fewest obstacles to accession might suit the geopolitical needs of the moment, but it risks losing sight of the original regional dimension of Western Balkans enlargement.

Towards a new European approach

The European Commission is aware that it needs to provide incentives for countries without an early accession perspective. It is planning to present new proposals on gradual integration in its forthcoming communication on September 30th. A more ambitious and flexible framework for gradual integration, aiming to include countries in parts of the internal market, would encourage reforms and allow the EU to develop a more intelligent and honest approach to conditionality. This is especially necessary for advancing the rule of law and democratic standards, which are all too often neglected in favour of the broader geopolitical picture. This has contributed to the diminished transformative power of the accession process and negatively impacted regional stability.

In addition to exploring options for gradual integration, the EU should revive the diplomatic processes at the heart of what its regional approach was originally meant to achieve. This requires redoubling efforts on the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, progressing state reform of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and engaging with member states to clear the blockages holding North Macedonia back. This would contribute to regional stability and advance Europe’s geopolitical agenda by reducing opportunities for Russia, China and other actors to exert influence in the region.

The generations that lived through the good and the bad of the regional past are getting older. They might not live to see the European future promised to them at the turn of the century. Many would, however, still remember a line from an old Italian comic book Alan Ford, much loved in former Yugoslavia: “It is much better to be rich and beautiful than to be poor and ugly”. If the EU does not redouble its efforts to close remaining unresolved issues, its membership criteria would effectively follow the same logic. This would be a sad case of the EU abandoning its own ambition and responsibility. 

Source

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Cary Fowler, founder and president of the Food Security Leadership Council and former US global food security envoy, and Jim O’Brien, ECFR distinguished visiting fellow and former US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. 

As conflict, climate change and geopolitical fragmentation converge, there is a growing risk of a global food crisis. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to disrupt grain exports, the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is restricting fertiliser shipments, and a potentially severe El Niño threatens drought and falling harvests across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

These overlapping pressures will impact hundreds of millions of people who are already food insecure. While mechanisms are in place to mitigate the impact of food insecurity—for example, in 2022, the UN, the US, the EU and regional actors worked together to keep grain flowing from Ukraine and avert a broader catastrophe—many of the conditions that enabled cooperation then are weaker today. This has created a dangerous gap in global leadership. 

Together, Mark, Cary and Jim explore how a new international coalition could prevent millions more people from falling into hunger. They discuss the roles of Europe, the UN and major powers such as China, India and Russia; the case for humanitarian ceasefires covering grain exports and fertiliser shipments; and why food security should be treated as a central pillar of global security. 

Can governments overcome geopolitical rivalry to address a crisis that no one wants? How severe could the impact of El Niño become in already vulnerable regions? What would a ceasefire covering grain and fertiliser look like in practice? And can Europe coordinate a global response when other leaders are absent? 

This podcast episode was recorded on September 9th 2026. 

Bookshelf 

 Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence, Wendy Sherman 
The Growth of Biological Thought, Ernst Mayr 
The Big Bet, Michael Auerbach 
China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung 
Against war, drought and hunger: A global coalition to prevent a food crisis, Cary Fowler, Jim O’Brien and Jana Kobzova 

Source

💾

Ukraine is fighting for survival against Russia while its democracy faces a second battle at home. Ukrainians show extraordinary trust in the Armed Forces, family and civic networks—but far less in politicians, government and bureaucrats. Now, high-level corruption scandals, calls for wartime elections, roadblocks to EU accession and possible peace talks with Russia are raising a hard question: can the trust that has helped Ukraine survive the war be turned into a state people believe in?

In this episode, Jessica Hendrick welcomes Roman Petrov, honourable president of the Ukrainian European Studies Association, professor of EU law at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and one of Ukraine’s leading experts on EU accession and EU-Ukraine relations working on the RE-ENGAGE project; and Svitlana Zalishchuk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Sweden and former civil-society activist, member of parliament and government adviser, now working at the centre of Ukraine’s wartime defence and European security partnerships. Roman warns that major decisions on peace could be challenged later if Ukraine’s elections remain suspended. Svitlana pushes back on the picture of low public trust, arguing that the war has actually increased trust in the state—just unevenly—and that public trust itself is part of Ukraine’s national defence capability.

RE-ENGAGE conducted nearly 600 interviews with Kyiv residents last year, at times even moving them into air-raid shelters as alarms sounded across the city. Drawing on the findings, Jessica, Roman and Svitlana discuss how a society can distrust the state so deeply and still defend democracy; what recent corruption scandals reveal about whether the system actually works; and if fast-tracking EU membership risks turning reform into a superficial “copy-paste” of European laws.

How is the far-right AfD’s historic landslide in eastern Germany viewed by those working on EU accession in Kyiv? Why might Ukraine now be better described as a contributor to European defence than a recipient of military aid? And what does Ukraine need to do differently to make its post-war vision last?

Further reading:
RE-ENGAGE research on Ukraine
RE-ENGAGE research on Eastern Europe 
RE-ENGAGE policy recommendations on Eastern Europe

This podcast was recorded on September 9th 2026.

Source

💾

Summary

• The Kremlin is promoting Ukraine war veterans and, in so doing, cultivating a proto-elite to fill future vacancies and reinforce Russia’s militarised course.
• Through programmes such as “Time of Heroes”, and through elections, at least several thousand actual and nominal veterans now already hold political or government posts.
• The new preference for war credentials has supplanted the earlier trend of hiring technocrats. Russian cadre policy has shifted towards “making loyal people competent”, as in other consolidated autocracies. Technocrats will remain important, but their declining influence will gradually reduce the state’s economic and administrative adaptability.
• The Kremlin is dispersing veterans across institutions and deliberately mixing combatants with regular officials who have acquired veteran status. This will likely constrain the emergence of a coherent political veterans grouping.
• Nevertheless, the 2026 State Duma election is likely to bring around 50 nominal and actual veterans into parliament. Their presence could become an institutional brake on foreign policy moderation after a ceasefire or even future change of the top leadership in Russia.
• European governments should remain cool in the face of enhanced rhetoric from the new elite; maintain informal contact (where possible and safe) with less confrontational sections of Russia’s governing class; and keep mobility options open to young Russians, while taking necessary precautions.

Cadres in khaki

Like much else in wartime Russia, the United Russia line-up for the September 2026 State Duma election was settled only at the eleventh hour and with Vladimir Putin personally involved. The five names placed at the top of the ruling party’s nationwide list made for a revealing mix: foreign minister Sergei Lavrov; Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin; Yevgeny Poddubny, one of Russia’s best-known pro-war military correspondents; Maria Lvova-Belova, who is subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alongside Putin for her role in the deportation of Ukrainian children; and Vladislav Golovin, a young veteran who lost a leg during Russia’s assault on Mariupol.

This choice offers a snapshot of a broader shift already under way within Russia’s bureaucracy, and one that is likely to accelerate in the coming years. Lavrov represents the old guard bureaucracy; Sobyanin, the mid-2010s class of capable managers with appeal among urban Russians; the other three owe their newfound political prominence largely to the war in Ukraine. Technocrats and qualified administrators, like Sobyanin, whose presence within the elite expanded in the years preceding the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, are receding into the background. They will not disappear altogether, because their expertise remains crucial to keep the Russian economy functioning. But they are no longer a rising force. The war is producing a new elite cohort whose careers and status are inseparable from the war. Like any elite group in other post-Soviet authoritarian systems, this cohort has its own set of functions and tasks, which it performs in the interests of the ruling circle or—in the highly personalist Russian system—for the ruler himself.

Putin set out his intention to create a new group within the Russian bureaucracy most explicitly in his February 2024 annual address to senior officials. In it, he announced the launch of the “Time of Heroes” programme to retrain military personnel and prepare them for appointments to civilian posts. In particular, Putin said a “genuine elite” should be drawn from contract soldiers and mobilised servicemen who had fought in Ukraine and, after further training, take up positions “across education…, in state-owned enterprises [and] business, in state and municipal administration”. They would replace parts of the old elite, particularly those who had “lined their pockets in the 1990s”. Ultimately, he suggested, they could become the generation to which “Russia might one day be entrusted”.

Between February 2024 and July 2026, Putin returned to this idea at least 22 times based on the Kremlin.ru record of his official and public activities (calculations undertaken by the author). Some of these remarks came during dedicated meetings with officers or their wives. But Putin also raised the subject in less obvious settings, including a forum with municipal leaders and his most recent televised Direct Line, a regular event where he responds to questions from citizens and journalists. During the latter, he repeatedly gave the floor to a specially invited officer and even asked his advice; the officer was later killed at the front.

Putin’s de facto promise to “entrust” Russia to people who had fought in the war, his repeated references to a new elite and the constant emphasis on his personal oversight of the Time of Heroes programme have prompted several explanations.

The most common is that the initiative is meant to support military recruitment by showing that fighting in Ukraine can lead to substantial career opportunities after a return to civilian life. The second sees it as a means of political control: the Kremlin can identify ambitious veterans, bind their careers to the state and absorb them before they organise independently or become political rivals. The third assigns veterans a larger political role. In this reading, Putin is seeking to push aside established business and bureaucratic elites in favour of ideologically conformist loyalists, including veterans, with the supposition that Russia could turn into a closed, North Korean-style militarised autocracy over the next 6-10 years.

Without dismissing any of these three explanations, this paper shows that the Kremlin’s integration of war veterans into the government system is part of a structural, long-term project. The state is creating a new recruitment pool of people tied directly to the war. It is selecting and training them for gradual promotion into positions of power. This marks a genuine shift in Russian cadre policy, away from a “make competent people loyal” model, associated with competitive authoritarianism, to a “make loyal people competent” logic, which is more typical for consolidated dictatorships. In his forthcoming book, “Autocratic Intelligence: How Modern Dictatorships are Getting Smarter”, George Washington University political scientist David Szakonyi identifies a broader tendency across regimes. Despite a steady trend between 2000 and 2020 towards increasing the share of technocrats in government, in more recent years dictators have found it less expensive to build up the competence of those already considered loyal (largely because securing the loyalty of competent officials has become more costly).

The paper maps this new recruitment pool by using a dataset including a named roster of federal Time of Heroes participants, their biographies, actual combat participation and post-programme appointments. These data were supplemented by three interviews with programme lecturers undertaken by the author and by publicly available information on applications and enrolment in regional equivalents of the Time of Heroes programme. The paper also draws on a named roster of 2026 Russian State Duma candidates who identified themselves as war participants, including their biographies and actual combat participation. This is supplemented by aggregate data on serving deputies with military experience elected to all regional and selected municipal legislatures between 2022 and 2025.

The data allow us to test whether two forms of loyalty appear to be rewarded via these programmes. It is assumed, first, that most veterans promoted through the system will owe their careers to Putin personally. The second assumption is that they will have an ideological coherence and loyalty intimately bound up with Putin’s decision to wage war against Ukraine and to a broader clash with NATO.

The findings of the paper confirm that the Russian regime is placing veterans in the middle and upper-middle ranks of the bureaucracy and state-linked structures. It seems to be integrating them into existing elite structures without fully displacing the other main elite groups, including siloviki (individuals with a background in the security services), technocrats and state company managers. The paper further suggests that veterans’ presence will place pressure on bureaucratic and business elites to demonstrate their loyalty to the military by extending tangible support for the war. Over time, these developments have the potential to create a vocal, embedded constituency for a militarised foreign policy orientated towards preparing society and the bureaucratic system for wider confrontation with the West; or protecting Putin’s wartime legacy if the regime weakens or pursues a partial rapprochement with Europe and America.

Putin’s need for new recruitment pools

In democracies, governing elites are renewed through channels such as competitive elections, party turnover and entry from business or civil society. In contrast, autocracies close these channels off. Personnel appointments are thus instrumental to helping the winning coalition in authoritarian regimes reward allies, co-opt rivals and remove potential challengers. Yet regime survival also depends on having competent officials to do the work of running things. This creates what political economists Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin (drawing in part on evidence from Russia) call the “loyalty-competence trade-off”: capable subordinates improve state performance but may gain the networks and authority to threaten the ruler; yet safer loyalists may lack the skills to govern.

The practical challenge for leaders like Putin is to build recruitment pools that provide competence without allowing rivals to emerge. Party-based autocracies can manage this risk through internal career ladders and controlled competition. The ruling party screens, trains and monitors candidates. This gives the leadership a broad pool of officials whose performance it can observe and whose careers it can control. In more personalistic regimes like Russia, capable outsiders have little incentive to build a career in politics or state service and are unlikely to make their abilities more widely known. So the ruler must draw on groups already within reach—or create new recruitment pools by establishing dedicated programmes.

During his first two presidential terms, Putin drew senior personnel from two main recruitment pools. One consisted of his childhood friends, former KGB colleagues and associates from St Petersburg city hall; the other was siloviki. Personal acquaintance was enough to advance members of the first group. Siloviki could gain posts without a direct connection to Putin because they came from a professional and ideological milieu he knew and trusted. The model worked partly because some longtime associates brought genuine economic or administrative expertise along with their loyalty.

By around 2016, the first pool was running dry: most available figures had already received positions while others had fallen out of favour. Although people with a silovik background held around 20% of key posts by 2008, their progression into senior civilian roles later slowed. Instead, the security agencies gained broader powers as the regime grew more repressive.

At the same time, the Kremlin’s need for capable managers increased. The return of gubernatorial elections in 2012 created particular demand for candidates who were loyal, independent of regional elites and able to manage an administration and run a public campaign. Such people were difficult to find, especially as by that time governors in Russia had lost autonomy and faced a growing risk of prosecution.

Putin initially responded by recycling personnel. His third and fourth terms brought frequent rotations of the same figures between senior posts in the bureaucracy and state-owned companies, while some officials remained in place for decades. This produced a personnel bottleneck and left mid-ranking officials with few routes to the top.

An experiment with appointing members of Putin’s personal body guard detail as governors showed the limits of personal familiarity as a selection mechanism. These officials were loyal, but often lacked experience in management. All of them were later dismissed from their posts as governors.

A more successful approach emerged after the current supervisor of domestic politics, Sergei Kiriyenko, joined the presidential administration in 2016. He turned previously marginal personnel reserves into an important source of appointments. Kiriyenko created the “School of Governors”, “Leaders of Russia” and other specific cadre programmes, combining competitive selection and training with visible presidential sponsorship. Participants met Putin and were presented as young, effective technocrats. This gave the Kremlin candidates who appeared competent but remained dependent on the regime for advancement. The technocratic turn peaked with Mikhail Mishustin’s appointment as prime minister in 2020 and the subsequent reshaping of the government.

These programmes, together with recruitment into Mishustin’s government, formed a new technocratic pool for mid-to-senior level federal officials (ministers, deputy ministers and departmental directors), as well as senior regional officials. As a result, between 2017 and 2024, almost 400 people were trained through the School of Governors, and 52 graduates went on to become heads of regions. The Leaders of Russia programme produced similar results, with more focus on the federal level. Szakonyi’s biographical database of 1,578 senior Russian officials shows that roughly one in six top officials serving in 2024 was a technocrat, nearly three times the share in 2000.

Yet the prolonged war in Ukraine may have eroded the confidence of Putin and his circle in the technocratic recruitment pool. Technocrats appeared insufficiently committed to the war, while some failed on tasks central to it, including the construction of fortifications in the frontline Kursk region. Russia’s technocratic turn is now losing momentum, and Putin’s relationship even with key figures in this group, such as central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, appears to be changing. This has made the creation and expansion of a new, more reliably loyal recruitment pool increasingly urgent.

Federal “heroes”: Filling the bureaucracy’s middle ranks

The Time of Heroes programme announced by Putin in February 2024 is the main vehicle for building the recruitment pool needed for his new “elite”. It is run by the Higher School of Public Administration of RANEPA (the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). The programme follows the model of earlier cadre initiatives, combining lectures and team building with practical placements. In 2025, it effectively supplanted the technocrat-orientated School of Governors, whose next intake was postponed. (The next section in this paper discusses the regional Time of Heroes variants, which were set up later.)

Time of Heroes is open only to participants in Russia’s war against Ukraine, including contract soldiers and mobilised servicemen with a university degree. Official figures show more than 65,000 people applied online and underwent initial testing for the programme’s two federal cohorts in 2024 and 2025. Just under 170 progressed to in-person training.

Unlike other RANEPA cadre programmes, Time of Heroes has not published a detailed curriculum. However, this paper draws on both the programme curriculum and the full participant lists for its two cohorts, obtained from lecturers who taught on the programme.

Both in-person cohorts began the programme with a two-week voyage aboard a nuclear-powered icebreaker from Murmansk to the North Pole and back. The journey was symbolically important, given the place of the Arctic in the worldview of Russia’s ruling elite. But it also served a political purpose: two weeks of isolation from the outside world provided an intensive opening exercise in cohort-building for participants.

Overall, however, Time of Heroes devotes relatively little time to such activities. Instead, it focuses on honing participants’ hard skills and giving them practical administrative experience. In contrast, School of Governors puts the trainee technocrats through numerous team building, patriotic and sometimes extreme exercises, including jumping into water from a 7-metre-high cliff and lying beneath a moving tank. Hard skills and practical administrative work account for 68% of Time of Heroes compared with 34% of the School of Governors. Team building and activities intended to foster horizontal ties make up just 11% against 35%. For all these differences, the programmes devote a similar share of 11-13% to “political information”: talks by senior state officials and propagandists on national priorities and patriotism.

The contrast between the two programmes suggests a shift from the “make competent people loyal” cadre model to “make loyal people competent”. School of Governors appears to have selected recruits for their administrative ability and then worked to bind them more closely to the regime. By contrast, Time of Heroes treats participation in the war as proof of ideological loyalty and concentrates on turning those already trusted by the Kremlin into capable administrators.

Early expert and media commentary questioned whether the Time of Heroes programme was genuine. It suggested that serving officials and politicians might simply use it to advance their careers without experiencing real combat. But the author’s research of all 169 participants in the two Time of Heroes cohorts (see detailed methodology of data collection and analysis in the appendix) suggests it does provide a genuine route into civilian career for military personnel who have fought in Ukraine.

Of the participants, 84% have exclusively military backgrounds. Another 9% moved between military and civilian work, either joining the armed forces after a brief civilian career or returning to them following the full-scale invasion. Junior officers—from lieutenant to captain—and senior officers—from major to colonel—together account for around 90%; only a handful are generals. Participants’ average age is 40. The programme includes 159 men and 10 women, most of the latter medical officers who worked as critical-care specialists or surgeons, likely close to the frontline.

Drawing on official Russian sources, independent media investigations and Ukrainian projects, we found strong evidence of actual combat participation for 94% of the 156 participants whose records we could assess (out of the 169 in total). Moreover, almost 40% of the recruits have been awarded major combat decorations, with recipients concentrated in the second cohort of the programme. In addition, at least 13 have been accused of war crimes, including involvement in some of the most notorious crimes committed in the Kyiv region in spring 2022. Public records or participants’ interviews indicate that almost half were seriously wounded. Some, including participants later appointed to senior government posts, applied to the programme directly from hospital after sustaining severe injuries.

One lecturer on the programme summed up the participants as “very simple, well-drilled Russian blokes”. Another said that after a trial class on a very specific economic topic, he had to simplify an already adapted syllabus even further to accommodate participants who “could not focus for even half an hour”, which he thought might be a consequence of their injuries.

Progression

Nevertheless, by July 2026, 108 of the 169 participants in the two Time of Heroes cohorts had been appointed to posts at different levels of government or in state-owned companies. Another four had continued working in the government posts they held before entering the programme, although one was later killed in an explosion after returning from the front. Yet none of the biographical or service-related characteristics described above is a statistically significant predictor of receiving an appointment. This confirms thatthe programme appears to genuinely serve as a route for upward mobility and starting point into a civilian career for participants.

Although Time of Heroes is a federal programme, only just over half entered federal-level bodies. The remainder secured appointments on the regional or municipal level.

For this analysis, all appointments were grouped by their primary function into four categories. “Management” covers posts carrying substantive responsibility for running a particular sector, organisation or segment of the economy, mostly in the form of heading a ministry department or state-company division. “Ideology” includes youth policy, patriotic education and state messaging, including posts in Yunarmiya, Znanie and Movement of the First—state-sponsored organisations for patriotic education, revived from its Soviet predecessors. “Veteran liaison” covers non-security roles supporting veterans and their families. “Security liaison” refers to civilian posts coordinating with the security services in regional government or at strategically important enterprises.

Management is the largest category at both federal and regional levels, accounting for 47-54% of appointments. These posts frequently place veterans in sectors in which they have no relevant education or training. Such mismatches are not unprecedented in the Russian bureaucracy, but they had become less common at federal level as technocratic recruitment gained ground from the mid-2010s. Veteran appointments therefore represent a partial departure from that recent trend.

The range of managerial roles also shows how broadly war veterans are distributed across the Russian bureaucratic landscape. Participants in the all-out invasion of Ukraine can now be found in the presidential administration monitoring public sentiment, running the Roscosmos Corporate Academy, overseeing special communications at Rostelecom, managing the training process of Russian athletes and monitoring elections in the Central Election Commission.

For roughly the other half of appointees, the Kremlin has found three more clearly defined uses: of ideology, veteran liaison and security liaison, as outlined above. These narrower remits better fit veterans’ profiles, require less general administrative expertise and serve the Kremlin’s immediate and medium-term needs.

Ideological roles are concentrated at the federal level, where they make up 35% of appointments. They turn veterans into public advocates for the war and use them as an additional tool for the ideologisation of primary and secondary education. Golovin, mentioned earlier as the fifth-placed candidate on United Russia’s election list, now heads Yunarmiya’s Main Staff; the youth movement operates through schools and cadet classes. Meanwhile, the federal education ministry department responsible for pupils’ moral and patriotic upbringing is headed by Igor Yurgin, who previously commanded an assault unit of convicts and mobilised soldiers notorious for high-casualty “meat assaults”.

Veteran-liaison posts are at 15-20% for both the federal and regional level, where appointees’ role appears to be to manage rising social tensions over delayed payments, prolonged frontline deployments and issues with employment after discharge. At the federal level, one veteran now advises the labour and social protection minister, with responsibility for gathering feedback from former servicemen and their families. At a regional level, this intermediary function has often been embedded directly in the welfare bureaucracy: for example, in Altai Krai, a major decorated with the Order of Courage twice became deputy social protection minister.

The smaller security liaison category supports security coordination in the regions and at strategically important industrial facilities. Typically, a veteran becomes the civilian institution’s interlocutor with the military and siloviki. Their background is expected to help them understand security requirements while negotiating how these are applied, so that civilian administration or operations are not unduly disrupted. Examples include a deputy governor overseeing public safety and relations with the police and security agencies, or an adviser to the head of the federal civil aviation agency handling relations with the defence ministry.

Veterans’ career trajectories suggest that appointments usually build on existing connections. In 88% of cases in which a veteran received a regional post, it was in their home region (defined as a place of birth, education or extended previous military service). In around 45% of cases, the appointment also matched the institution or region of the participant’s first or second internship in Time of Heroes.

Together with the division of appointments among the four categories, these patterns point to a practical approach adopted by the programme’s supervisors in the presidential administration. On the one hand, their objective is to find managerial posts for as many participants as possible across a wide range of sectors and regions. This gives the Kremlin a pool of loyal candidates who have acquired relevant experience, available for when Putin later calls for a veteran to fill a particular and more high-ranking vacancy. On the other hand, it seems that the supervisors are also using veterans to address medium-term political aims for the regime. This is producing a group that promotes militarised values in education and youth policy, a second group that mediates between the state and dissatisfied servicemen and their families, and a third that connects civilian institutions with the security apparatus.

At this stage, veterans’ longer-term prospects do not appear to differ substantially according to the function of their first appointment. The exception is with the municipal posts, which carry the least status and appear unlikely to provide a route to significant promotion. Across federal and regional appointments, subsequent advancement may depend more on performance and the appointee’s relationship with their senior supervisor than on the initial brief.

The timing and sequencing of appointments support this interpretation. Initial batches follow Russia’s electoral calendar, peaking around the annual voting day in September. Veterans who perform well in their posts can then be fast-tracked from regional to federal ministry; from deputy director to director of a state organisation; from deputy governor to governor; or some receive a symbolic but higher-status seat on a presidential commission alongside more managerial appointments. For at least 10 veterans, the September 2026 State Duma election is likely to be the next step, giving them a second or third appointment.

One programme lecturer described a similar logic with reference to the project’s length and multiple stages: all the “capable” and “more or less healthy” veterans had already received government posts. Meanwhile, those “in good standing” with their current senior supervisors were being lined up for promotion.

Yet Time of Heroes also serves a third, more immediate political function. When the programme was launched, analysts often interpreted it chiefly as a publicity instrument: by showcasing veterans entering prestigious civilian careers, the Kremlin could present wartime service as a route to social mobility, encourage contract enlistment and reassure servicemen that their participation in the war would be rewarded after their return to civilian life. How far the appointments perform this function becomes clearer when the substantive authority they confer is considered alongside the recipients’ previous careers.

By July 2026, no war veteran had reached the highest state offices, such as federal minister, head of a federal agency or deputy prime minister. Only four of the 108 appointees had reached the next tier down in the nomenklatura hierarchy, which includes governors and presidential envoys.

Of these, only Alexander Shuvaev, appointed governor of Belgorod region in spring 2026, had pursued an exclusively military career before 2022. His promotion illustrates the career ladder envisaged by the programme: after gaining short civilian experience as deputy governor in another region, he was selected when Putin called for a veteran to fill the more senior vacancy, becoming governor of a region bordering Ukraine where his frontline background seems more relevant.

However, the remaining three senior appointees entered the programme with prior political or bureaucratic experience. Artyom Zhoga, among the programme’s first appointees, went straight into the post of presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District. He had fought in Ukraine since 2014 but began building a political career in the occupied territories from 2023. The other two, Yevgeny Pervyshov and Maria Kostyuk, already had bureaucratic careers before 2022; the war and the programme accelerated their advancement into governorships. Kostyuk offers the clearest example of this political function. Formally the programme’s head rather than a participant, she nevertheless appeared on the participant lists supplied to us. The programme’s official website also regularly presents her governorship as one of the promotions produced by Time of Heroes. Kostyuk has not seen combat, but after her son was killed in 2022, she developed a nationally prominent pro-war media project and moved into veteran policy roles, helping her advance from a senior regional administrative post to governor.

These four senior appointments provide the Kremlin with highly visible examples of the social mobility promised by the programme. But they remain exceptions within its broader record. Ninety-two of the 108 appointments (85%) have settled in the middle and upper-middle ranks. Career military personnel hold most of these posts, which carry real but bounded authority, from heads of departments, units and public organisations to deputy ministers and senior managers in state-linked companies. Another 12 received positions such as advisers and project officers; nine of these came from military backgrounds and the remaining three had held only junior civilian roles before 2022.

Taken together, the appointments reveal a managed career pipeline. Time of Heroes supplies visible success stories for the Kremlin’s recruitment campaign, deploys veterans to meet immediate wartime needs and endows a broader cohort with the civilian experience needed for possible promotion. Advancement remains selective and dependent on existing patrons. This allows the presidential administration to build a reserve of war-linked officials while retaining control over when and how far they rise.

Regional “heroes”: Managing the return from war

In December 2024, Putin again invoked the idea of a new elite and ordered Russia’s regions to set up their own versions of Time of Heroes. Their purpose, he said, was to bring into “regional teams” people for whom “a sense of duty and service to society and the country come first”. Five months later, the Kremlin issued a requirement for Russia’s regions to train up 30-60 veterans each year. (This requirement joined metrics including poverty levels, access to healthcare and demographic trends.) In effect, the shift in federal cadre policy was extended to the regions, to be led largely by technocratic governors appointed under the previous recruitment model.

During 2025, every Russian region except Moscow launched its own equivalent; the capital apparently treated hosting the federal programme as sufficient. Regional programmes largely replicate the federal scheme: they recruit locally rooted combat veterans for posts in their home administrations, combine classroom instruction with practical placements and mentoring by serving officials, and are often delivered through regional RANEPA campuses. Federal Time of Heroes graduates serve as mentors or sit on their public councils.

The authoritarian dynamic in Russian centre-region relations rewards governors for demonstrating zealous, often excessive, compliance with Moscow’s demands. This existing dynamic is now also shaped by the Kremlin’s wartime priorities and thus produced the usual bureaucratic competition among regions over meeting the new veteran-training target. This saw governors attempt to give their own programmes maximum publicity, devise inventive names such as “The Call of Stalingrad” and “Valour of the Mountains”, and try to exceed the targets set by Moscow. By September 2026, one region had already run three separate, consecutive cohorts, more than the federal analogue; 31 (out of more than 80 regions) had formally enrolled more than 60 participants in a single cohort.

According to official regional figures, almost 44,000 people have applied to these programmes since 2024, with nearly 4,500 admitted. This puts the acceptance rate at around 10%, well above the 0.26% acceptance rate for the federal programme. But around 1,200 of those formally admitted to regional programmes remained in a deferred pool because they were still deployed. Both the use and size of this pool grew after the Kremlin introduced a rule preventing programmes from taking personnel away from the front.

In absolute terms, large regions with major military garrisons lead the number of enrolled veterans on their programmes. Moscow oblast received 2,400 applications, followed by Bashkortostan with 2,026 and Krasnodar region with 2,000. Formal enrolment followed a different pattern. Among regions with more than one million residents, Tula recorded the highest rate, with 130 admissions, or 8.93 per 100,000 residents, followed by Kursk (8.19) and Kaliningrad (6.78).

There is no statistically significant relationship between enrolment and either basic regional socioeconomic indicators or confirmed military deaths. Among regions with more than one million residents, the 10 with the highest per capita enrolment together recorded 8.2 confirmed military deaths per 10,000 residents, below the national rate of 9.05. Higher wartime losses therefore did not systematically translate into larger regional training cohorts.

Instead, the scale of regional programmes highly likely depends on an administrative and political choice by governors. The outliers are often regions whose governors have personal reasons to overperform. The Jewish Autonomous Region received almost 11 times the median number of applications, while Tambov enrolled as many participants as Moscow region despite having one-ninth of its population. As noted, governors Kostyuk and Pervyshov took part in the federal Time of Heroes programme and have a personal stake in making the model work. The Republic of Altai accepted 28% of applicants, more than twice the median, and has among the largest number of participants appointed to government posts. Following his demotion from senior federal politics to head of the poor, remote region of Altai, governor Andrei Turchak has strong incentives to regain Moscow’s trust. In Samara region, 93% of the first cohort found posts, while the second intake doubled to 90 participants, exceeding the KPI by 50%. This likely reflects governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev’s conservative, outspokenly pro-war populism.

The architecture and public image of the regional Time of Heroes reproduce the federal political demand of elite building. However, the programme supervisors in the presidential administration have reportedly also insisted on prioritising short-term administrative function for the veterans in regions. They expect to see them serving as credible intermediaries with other returnees, who might dismiss an ordinary official who had not fought, but would be more willing to engage with a fellow veteran.

This search for intermediaries appears to reflect concern that regions have started to feel the pressure of the ever-growing population of returnees. An estimated 170,000–400,000 people have already come back from the war. Many are struggling to find work and are facing social deprivation, fuelled partly by crimes committed by returnees, with some with previous criminal records and PTSD.

The regions are already feeling this burden, but the pattern of how Russia’s central-regional relations are structured overall is also evident in the context of work with veterans. As recent studies by political scientist András Tóth-Czifra show, federal measures for the integration of veterans are inadequate, and overall the Kremlin is reverting to a familiar tactic: delegating responsibility for returning servicemen without providing regions with additional resources.

The intermediary function envisaged by the Kremlin, together with this shortage of resources, helps explain why regional appointments differ from those produced by the federal programme. Although information on appointments from regional programmes remains fragmentary, veteran-liaison roles appear to account for 44% of regional appointments. This compares with 18% among graduates of the federal programme, while only 22% enter general management, against 50% federally. Ideological posts are also slightly more common, at 30% compared with 26%.

Regions are not simply filling vacancies, as was largely the case under the federal programme: 31% of all appointments went to newly created or repurposed veteran support posts, including units in regional ministries, agencies and advisers to governors. Six per cent of ideology-related appointments have the same logic. This is a regional strategy for adapting the federal elite-building model to scarce resources: create a limited administrative infrastructure around the new cohort and use its members to manage the much larger veteran population and social discontent regarding the war.

The shift in cadre policy is thus generating a new regional personnel pool of politically approved veterans, even if most are unlikely to reach senior office. With Moscow demanding their integration but leaving regions to manage the social costs, governors have little choice but to use this cohort to draw a visible line between “good” veterans who serve the state and “bad” returnees associated with crime and disorder, while buffering the tensions that mass demobilisation could bring.

Elected veterans: Blurring the boundaries of veteran status

Elections have become the third and final main route for integrating veterans into elite structures. This was not a significant feature in the first years of the war but became more common following Putin’s 2024 call for a “new elite”.

Russia’s 2026 State Duma election will be the first federal parliamentary contest since the full-scale invasion. The data suggest that a trend of promoting veterans into regional and municipal legislatures is set to continue at the federal level. That being said, (semi-official) ambitions in this regard appear to have tempered over time. In 2025, Kremlin-aligned experts predicted that veterans could take 40% of the Duma’s 450 seats. The estimate later fell to 20%, or 100 seats, and with the final confirmed number of candidates we now know this is yet lower. This retreat may reflect concerns within the presidential administration that a large veteran bloc would be harder to manage than the existing parliamentary factions.

The main route into the Duma mirrors the pattern seen in regional elections. All parliamentary parties are fielding veterans in this election, but the overwhelming majority of those set to win represent United Russia. Analysis of the 2025 regional election results suggests that United Russia veteran candidates enjoyed an electoral premium, aided by stronger administrative mobilisation as regional officials sought to meet a Kremlin priority. Veterans standing for other parties faced an electoral penalty, reflecting broader public unease and suspicion towards those returning from the war.

Of the 546 veterans who entered United Russia’s 2026 primaries for the State Duma election, the party ultimately registered 83 as candidates, or 15% of the total. Twenty-eight individuals had completed the federal Time of Heroes programme, 17 of whom secured a job following the programme. For 11 participants, election would be their first public post. The remaining 55 presented themselves as war participants but had not taken part in the federal or regional Time of Heroes programme. One federal Time of Heroes lecturer said that programme organisers explained the absence of a third cohort by describing the Duma election as “the real third cohort”.

Unlike the federal Time of Heroes programme, whose participants and appointees were mostly career military personnel with actual combat experience, United Russia’s veteran candidates for the State Duma have a markedly different profile. Analysis of their biographies found that at least 31 of the 83 are unlikely to have seen combat, despite presenting themselves as “SVO participants” (“special military operation” candidates) on the party’s primary website and during the election campaign. Twenty of these candidates were already politicians or officials before 2022, including serving Duma deputies, regional legislators, sectoral lobbyists and former Ukrainian officials who sided with Russia. Most of the 31 claim war participant status through special “volunteer battalions” set up by officials, which independent media investigations have found generally operate far from the frontline.

The filtering out of combat veterans began at the primary stage. Our calculations suggest that 427 of the 463 war-linked contenders excluded from United Russia’s final slate had probably seen combat; even a 25% bonus added to veterans’ results could not overcome the party’s tightly managed selection process. In one single-member district, the bonus produced an apparently unplanned victory for a combat veteran over a three-term Duma deputy. The veteran withdrew two weeks later, allowing party managers to return the nomination to the incumbent.

Based on list positions and the dynamics in single-member districts, our projection suggests 47 likely veteran winners, 25 of whom are career military personnel, with 19 already officials or politicians before 2022, and three from civilian careers without prior public office (who were drafted and participated in the war). Enrolment in Time of Heroes is the clearest marker of favourable electoral prospects: 19 of the programme’s 28 candidates are projected to win—68%, against 51% for the remainder of the list. With only four of the 48 veteran candidates fielded by other parliamentary parties in potentially winnable positions, the next Russian State Duma is likely to contain no more than 50 self-declared war veterans, making up around 11% of its 450 deputies.

The same pattern appears in regional legislatures: veterans remain a limited presence, and confirmed combatants sit alongside politicians who have acquired the label. Although officials claim that hundreds or even thousands of war participants became deputies in elections in 2024 and 2025, most hold unpaid seats on municipal councils. According to our data, by July 2026 in more consequential legislative bodies, such as regional parliaments and the city councils of regional capitals, veterans generally occupy only 6-10% of seats. Beyond the least populous regions, higher veteran representation is found mainly in territories with high confirmed military losses, such as Republic of Tuva, where veterans hold five of 32 seats (16%), and Komi, with five of 30 (17%), as well as annexed territories: in occupied Sevastopol, veterans hold five of 24 seats (21%).

Across the Duma contest and recent regional elections, the evidence points to the same logic as Time of Heroes. The “new elite” is not replacing established groups, although the project is clearly more than a mere publicity exercise. The Kremlin is building a recruitment pool through controlled routes, testing entrants for discipline, competence and political reliability, and reserving higher-status posts for those who are confirmed as loyal and having performed well.

This strategy also has room for nominal veterans. Recent media reports suggest that short, carefully managed trips to the war zone, followed by a return to the same job or a modest promotion, account for a significant share of officials now presented as war participants. Some experts believe that this path to the elite is coordinated and even overseen by the presidential administration, which is also responsible for integrating actual military personnel into government structures.

The profile of the Duma candidates and the wider use of nominal military service demonstrate how the bureaucracy is adapting to a new political fashion. Where officials once joined Leaders of Russia or the School of Governors to present themselves as technocrats, some now acquire a military credential through nominal service. Mixing officials who have briefly donned khaki with career soldiers in executive bodies and legislatures would dilute any “combat brotherhood”, making it harder for veterans to coalesce into a coherent political bloc and allowing the system to absorb them gradually.

The Kremlin has reason for such caution: over the past 30 years, even military figures and combat veterans once regarded as entirely loyal have repeatedly unsettled Russia’s central authorities. Lev Rokhlin tried to mobilise officers against Boris Yeltsin in the late 1990s; Igor Strelkov went from a leading figure in Russia’s 2014 war against Ukraine to an imprisoned Kremlin critic after the full-scale invasion started; and Wagner’s 2023 mutiny exposed the risks posed by an armed network with its own leadership and loyalties.

What Europe should expect and how it should prepare

The routes into the wartime recruitment pool examined in this paper—federal and regional cadre programmes, elections at different levels and officials’ short deployments with “volunteer battalions”—do not capture every group whose influence has grown through Russia’s war against Ukraine. Nearly five years of war have also elevated previously marginal ultraconservative actors such as Konstantin Malofeev, an Orthodox nationalist financier; propagandists and Z-war correspondents, including Poddubny, now placed third on United Russia’s federal list; and officials who have served in Russian occupation administrations in Ukraine.

Two very recent publications help establish both the scale and the institutional significance of this wider wartime reshaping of Russia’s political class. The latest journalistic count, from summer 2026, puts the lower-bound estimated at more than 1,300 formally recognised veterans in government bodies, with their number continuing to rise rapidly year by year. What could still be dismissed in 2024 as Kremlin PR strategy aimed mainly at supporting military recruitment is now harder to treat as merely symbolic. Recent research by Joris Van Bladel interprets this expansion as part of a deeper institutional transformation: Russia is redistributing war experience through political, educational, patriotic and coercive institutions, with veterans becoming the human infrastructure of a state reorganising itself around permanent mobilisation for the war. 

The present paper adds an empirical cadre-policy dimension to Van Bladel’s broader argument. Drawing on original data on participants’ backgrounds and subsequent appointments, it shows the Kremlin is embedding both actual and nominal veterans across the state through federal and regional programmes and elections. The previous preference for technocrats is giving way to people whose political credentials derive from the war. Their gradual entry into government at different levels, and into Putin’s personal recruitment pool, suggests that Moscow is staffing the state for a prolonged period of active conflict.

This cadre shift forms part of the wider normalisation of war within the regime’s operation. There is little to suggest Putin is likely to end the war. If anything, increasingly damaging Ukrainian strikes during 2026 appear to have strengthened his resolve to continue, provoking anger and retaliation rather than greater willingness to compromise.

The promotion of veterans, of course, should not be read as evidence that Russia is moving inevitably towards a military regime resembling the classic dictatorships of Latin America or Africa. The system may remain highly personalist even as veterans acquire a larger place within it. Still, their incorporation into the bureaucracy, including in the form of a mixture of actual and nominal veterans and the veterans’ varied presence across different regions, will have medium-term consequences for Russia’s internal evolution. European policymakers should bear this evolution in mind as it considers the possibility of further escalation.

Stay cool in the face of sharpening rhetoric

The Kremlin’s shift in its cadre policy means the number of pro-war voices emanating from within the Russian elite will continue to grow. This will heighten the anti-Western—and especially anti-European—rhetoric. The regime’s controlled recruitment system will usher in the more regular articulating of hardline positions once associated mainly with siloviki and radical conservatives. For instance, career officers with real combat experience have publicly rejected a ceasefire along the current frontline. Nominal veterans, whose political capital depends even more directly on issuing pro-war rhetoric, have campaigned on promises to continue “destroying the enemy’s manpower”.

Up to 50 war veterans may enter the State Duma in September. Even if the current Duma—which mixes federal powerbrokers, sidelined regional leaders, and industry (including military-industrial complex) lobbyists and scattered celebrities—already provides reliable support for aggressive Kremlin initiatives. The veterans cohort in the new assembly will matter chiefly as a source of further self-orientated militarist, repressive and anti-Western proposals and as a parliamentary amplifier of the most aggressive positions.

However, European governments should not read too much into the bombast likely to follow September’s election. Instead, they should take care to monitor the more gradual consequences as veterans ascend the broader power vertical: the Kremlin-centred top-down chain of federal, regional and state-linked institutions, held together by presidential control over appointments, resources and political advancement. These will emerge over the next 4-6 years as today’s mid-ranking appointees move upward and form a constituency whose careers depend on preserving the war as an affirmative political myth. Such a cohort could narrow the scope for normalisation after a ceasefire, during elite turnover or with a future change of leadership.

Still, the bark of elite rhetoric is likely to remain worse than its bite.

Throughout the full-scale war, hawks within the Russian elite have steadily escalated their rhetoric, using increasingly extreme threats and predictions to command attention abroad. Dmitry Medvedev’s recurrent warnings of nuclear escalation, Nikolai Patrushev’s prediction that Ukraine might cease to exist in 2025 and repeated claims by the SVR (Russia’s foreign intelligence service) of imminent Western false-flag operations illustrate the pattern. Such statements attract international headlines and seek to intimidate policymakers and shape wider public debate, although the dramatic events they threaten or predict have rarely materialised.

European planning should therefore assume considerable continuity in Moscow’s (already highly) confrontational course. Governments should weigh any new railings against observable changes in force posture and operational preparations. They should avoid amplifying them in ways that allow Moscow to set the European public debate.

Prepare for a more polarised post-Putin elite

For now, veterans’ prospects for further advancement depend on their performance in their current (usually first) appointment and on the relationship they build with their immediate superior, whether a senior federal official or regional governor, and with the programme’s curators in the presidential administration. They are dispersed across institutions, placed under the mentorship of incumbent officials and mixed with nominal veterans. This will dilute any shared identity based on combat experience. Most owe their new careers to presidential programmes or individual officials. They have stronger incentives to cultivate these relationships than to organise among themselves.

The September election could weaken this system of controlled distribution. Bringing up to 50 veterans into the State Duma—most with real combat experience—means they will soon be rubbing shoulders with one another day to day. They will also have parliamentary staff whose work can amplify their profile, as can their committee work. It is not too hard to see how a shared agenda around veterans’ benefits, appointments and the commemoration and legacy of the war could bring them together (and help them forge ties with veterans and other supporters outside the Duma). 

A formal veterans caucus would not be necessary for them to nevertheless gain in importance. Joint legislation, coordinated public campaigns and informal support for one another’s appointments could gradually turn a shared political credential into an organised interest. Such a network will remain loyal to the Kremlin while its members bargain collectively for budgets, positions, legal privileges and political protection. The opportunity exists to acquire influence within the governing coalition without becoming an autonomous challenger to it.

European governments should not expect the impact of this network to emerge only over time. Its political weight is likely to become apparent during an eventual transformation, when an organised veteran fraction could polarise the post-Putin elite and raise the domestic cost of normalising ties with the West. Such a more organised fraction would strengthen the position of those committed to confrontation with the West against comparatively pragmatic technocrats such as Mishustin or business tycoons cautiously loyal to the Kremlin, such as Andrey Melnichenko. 

European leaders, working with other Western governments, should preserve (where possible and safe) informal channels to less confrontational parts of the Russian elite, for whose members the prospect of restoring external ties could become an important source of leverage during a future transition. The point is not to naively hope that these groups can overthrow the current leadership, but to understand and identify those whose positions might be strengthened if a verifiable de-escalation in Ukraine and with the West takes place. This is as opposed to the more hawkish elites, now reinforced by the organised veteran voice.

Expect strains on the regional level 

The fashion for technocrats in the Russian government has now given way to a tendency towards khaki. At the federal level, the controlled integration of veterans will leave much of the technocratic group in place because its expertise remains essential to the system. Even so, its influence and share of senior posts will continue to decline. As war credentials and loyalty acquire greater weight in appointments, the economy and bureaucracy will gradually lose some of their capacity to manage the mounting pressures created by the war.

The effects will be more pronounced in the regions, where veteran appointments are expanding faster and Moscow has delegated reintegration without providing adequate resources. The early replacement of technocrat regional governors by veterans already points to declining managerial standards. Other veteran officials on the regional and local levels have also proved poorly equipped to handle social discontent. In some instances, they have met complaints with military habits of command or open aggression. 

Overall, regional systems for employment, rehabilitation and social support for veterans are unlikely to cope with a larger wave of demobilisation. Many returnees will remain marginalised, while public attitudes towards them will continue to be shaped by news of violent crimes perpetrated by veterans and other highly publicised incidents. This will deepen local polarisation and leave some veterans with a strong sense of grievance.

The Kremlin’s response to this is likely to preserve the distinction between small numbers of “good” veterans, rewarded with training, positions and public recognition, and the bulk of the rest: “bad” veterans, whose complaints or political activity are met with repression. This social group may direct its discontent against the authorities while remaining nationalist, militarist and revanchist. They could outlast Putin and create political problems for future Russian governments.

European policymakers should expect disputes over employment and unpaid benefits, crimes involving returnees and local protests to become early signs of strain. These pressures are more likely to produce a prolonged pattern of local violence, repression and administrative failure than any immediate challenge to the federal regime. Scenarios for how to deal with post-war Russia should therefore account for an uneven and potentially violent demobilisation whose destabilising effects will accumulate gradually, without necessarily encouraging liberalisation or opposition to the war.

Keep routes open to younger Russians

As this paper shows, a substantial share of veterans entering government structures are being placed in youth policy and patriotic education. These appointments add a new cadre of wartime loyalists to the ideological infrastructure already embedded in schools and universities. Their importance lies mainly in the institutional authority they acquire. But there are reasons to doubt that veterans will prove persuasive public speakers, especially when addressing younger audiences.

The broader ideological campaign developed in Russia since 2022 has struggled to win over younger Russians. Efforts to recruit university and college students into the new drone forces have increasingly relied on large payments and pressure from university administrations. These exposed the limits of patriotic appeals, and eventually failed. The removal of Yabloko, the only party campaigning for peace, from the 2026 election prompted an unusually young wave of online support, protests and detentions outside the Supreme Court. These episodes do not necessarily mean that younger Russians are broadly anti-war. But they show the state has failed to secure their automatic support, particularly in larger cities where alternative sources of information remain accessible.

Nevertheless, veteran appointments can still reshape the institutions in which this contest takes place. Officials controlling curriculums, grants, promotions and youth organisations can pressure teachers and university administrators to pursue more militarised priorities, while marginalising those who resist. Their careers also present military service and public association with the war as routes to status and advancement. A possible outcome of all this is a growing divide between an educational system imposing wartime values from above and young people who remain sceptical of them.

European governments should make use of this by widening educational and professional mobility for Russians who remain inside the country, without compromising on their own security. This year the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) suspended selection inside Russia after being designated an “undesirable organisation” by the Kremlin. However, some European mobility programmes should remain open to Russian-based students and researchers. Security risks for both students and recipient institutions and countries may be addressed by providing remote or third-country selection, individual vetting, secure communications and tailored protection protocols. European governments should also continue funding independent Russian-language media, accredited online education and tools that provide ways to circumvent censorship. 

Maintaining these routes would give younger Russians alternatives to state institutions, draw students, teachers and researchers away from an increasingly militarised system, and preserve an educated community with experience outside Kremlin control.

Methodology for data collection and analysis

This paper draws on three linked datasets covering the federal Time of Heroes programme, its regional equivalents and war veteran candidates in the 2026 State Duma election. The coding rules developed for the federal dataset were reused where relevant in the other two; the collection, verification and analysis of each dataset are described separately below.

The analysis of the federal Time of Heroes programme in this paper draws on a participant-level dataset covering the biographies, military service, previous and/or subsequent careers of all participants in its first two in-person cohorts. Built incrementally through OSINT collection, it combines official programme materials with media reports, specialist databases and investigative lookup tools, as detailed below:

• Since Time of Heroes publishes no participant roster, complete lists for its two in-person cohorts were initially obtained from a programme lecturer interviewed for this research. The public figures relating to cohorts’ enrolment are 83 and 85 participants. But the first cohort list, which we obtained, also included programme head Maria Kostyuk as an attendee. Although she did not participate in actual combat, after her son was killed in the war in 2022 she developed a nationally prominent pro-war media project and later became head of the programme and the governor of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The programme’s official website cites her governorship in typical publications about appointments received by participants. She was therefore included, bringing the dataset to 169 people.
• Collecting information on each participant started with a complete scrape of the programme’s website and Telegram channel, using the Telegram API and web-scraping tools. It was then expanded through manual search of participants in Russian news agencies and outlets; participants’ own interviews with programme organisers or with regional media; Russian governors’ Telegram channels, earlier investigations by Russian independent media and specific war-related Russian websites and Ukrainian databases.
• For a narrow set of indicators that public sources rarely report (participants’ year of birth, military rank and unit and so on), we supplemented this with lookup tools common in Russian-language investigative practice, including caller-ID aggregators such as GetContact and commercial search services indexing leaked and aggregated personal records, such as Himera Search.
• Collected biographical, career and service information was cross-checked across multiple sources and converted into standardised analytical variables. Pre-war careers were coded into four categories: career military personnel, security-service commanders, junior civilian employees and senior political or managerial figures. Combat experience was confirmed only where evidence identified a unit and area of operations, provided a first-person account of frontline service, or linked a decoration to a specific episode. Participants documented solely in staff or rear roles, or as volunteers or mobilised servicemen without an identifiable unit or area of deployment, were coded as non-combat. Wounds required direct evidence, such as hospitalisation, amputation, an explicit biographical statement or admission through the programme’s medical track. Where evidence pointed in none of these directions, the relevant indicator was coded as unknown rather than zero.
• Participants’ internship and appointment were verified through an official announcement, a news report or the appointing institution’s personnel page. Posts were coded by institutional level, primary function, a five-tier seniority scale and sequence, allowing repeated appointments to be traced as career trajectories. Four participants had already held their posts before entering the programme; these cases were excluded from counts of programme outcomes.

Statistical analysis of this dataset was used to test whether participants’ observable characteristics affected their likelihood of receiving an appointment. Appointees and non-appointees were compared using a two-sample t-test for age and chi-squared tests for categorical variables, including career background, civilian experience, rank tier and so on. A multivariate logistic regression then tested all factors jointly. Wound status approached significance in the bivariate analysis (p≈0.05), but because it was known for around half of participants, no conclusion was drawn from this result.

To supplement the OSINT dataset, the author conducted three semi-structured, in-depth interviews with lecturers who delivered courses or individual modules to one or both federal cohorts of Time of Heroes. The interviews took place online between January and April 2026. To allow the respondents to speak freely, their identities have been withheld.

The analysis of regional Time of Heroes programmes draws on a dataset covering 83 Russian regions, excluding the occupied Ukrainian territories. All data are current to September 1st 2026. A programme was identified in every region except Moscow. As no federal register exists and no region publishes a complete participant roster, the dataset was assembled from open sources through automated collection followed by manual verification:

• An initial inventory of websites, Telegram channels and other resources associated with regional programmes was compiled using an LLM-based agent with web-search and browsing tools, which queried Russian-language search engines and followed references from regional government portals. Every link the agent returned was checked by hand for validity, correct regional attribution and actual relevance to the programme.
• All accessible material was scraped from the relevant sections of these websites: news feeds, official documents, descriptions of the selection stages and eligibility criteria, and the composition of programme public councils. From this corpus, an LLM-generated set of regular expressions extracted messages containing the numerical parameters, such as number of applications, candidates passing selection, enrolment, reserve enrolment, graduates, appointments and cohort dates. Every extracted figure was then checked manually against its primary link, and corrected where the automated extraction had misattributed a value. In 14 programmes, some of the individual participants were also named on these websites; that information was extracted as well.
• Using the Telegram API, the channels of regional governors were downloaded in full, together with a set of further official channels in which mentions of the programmes had surfaced during initial collection. An LLM applying regular expressions identified and extracted messages referring to participants in regional programmes, and from these the fact of a post-programme appointment and any available biographical information. The results were verified manually, and biographical data were supplemented through the same OSINT procedures used for participants in the federal programme. This yielded 436 documented appointments across 79 of the 83 regions.

Population and baseline socioeconomic indicators were taken from the dataset published by the “To Be Precise” project, which draws on Rosstat data. Regional casualty figures came from the register of confirmed, named Russian military deaths maintained by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service.

Enrolment and application counts were normalised per 100,000 residents and tested against basic regional socioeconomic indicators using Spearman rank correlation, followed by partial correlation controlling for population. Each test was recomputed with the smallest-population regions excluded, as their per capita rates are unstable. Raw counts correlate with casualties (ρ = +0.49 for enrolment, +0.62 for applications), but this reflects region size: once population is controlled for, the association between casualties and the number of participants selected falls to near zero and reverses direction relative to the raw correlation (ρ = −0.08 to −0.15), while the association with the number of applications remains weakly positive throughout (ρ = +0.17 to +0.20). The same pattern was found between the number of selected participants and the regional socioeconomic indicators tested.

The analysis of war veterans contesting the September 2026 State Duma election draws on a candidate-level dataset covering nominees whom parties or candidates publicly presented as war participants, with more detailed biographical coding for candidates from the ruling United Russia party. It was assembled through automated collection from party platforms followed by manual verification:

• Official sources give different numbers of United Russia candidates with war experience. The United Russia leadership spoke of 76 war participants; the head of the Central Election Commission put the figure at 52. Neither body publishes the criteria behind its figure. By our count, the certified United Russia lists contain 83 such candidates. Our figure comes from a complete download of United Russia’s primary election website, which offered all candidate profiles in machine-readable form. We collected all regional lists, totalling 18,976 people, and filtered them with the “svo”: true (special military operation) field, United Russia’s own marker for war participants. That yielded 1,273 candidates, 546 of whom were running for the State Duma. Each was then matched by full name against the United Russia’s certified list (613 entries: 388 on the federal list and 225 in single-mandate districts). This produced 83 matches.
• Individual primary profiles were collected for all candidates carrying United Russia’s war-participant marker. Where available, these provided date and place of birth, education, current employment and position, and a free-text biography. Information on the 83 registered Duma candidates was supplemented through the same OSINT procedures used for the federal Time of Heroes dataset. Cross-matching identified 28 programme participants, whose previously verified biographical records were carried over.
• The information was converted into standardised variables using the federal programme’s coding rules. Combat experience required evidence identifying a unit and area of operations, a first-person account of frontline service or a decoration linked to a specific episode. Candidates documented solely in rear, staff or medical-support roles, or in officially sponsored short-deployment formations within the BARS system, such as Kaskad, were coded as non-combat unless separate evidence placed them at the front. Cases with insufficient evidence were coded as unknown rather than zero.
• Pre-war careers were divided into five tracks: career military personnel without public office; career military personnel appointed to public office after 2022; civilians without public office; civilians entering public office after 2022; and candidates who already held political or administrative office before 2022. The final category took precedence over all others, while elected and civil service positions were treated equivalently.
• For nominees from other parliamentary parties, published candidate lists and biographies were reviewed manually to identify those presented as war participants. This produced 48 additional veteran candidates from the other parliamentary parties.

Likely outcomes were modelled under the most recent reported assumed United Russia party-list result of approximately 45% at around 50% turnout. Projections for single-member districts incorporated the 2021 State Duma election results in the same constituencies and documented cases of informally negotiated districts left by United Russia to candidates from other parties. This allocation placed 47 of United Russia’s 83 veteran candidates in winning positions. Applying the same criteria to the other parliamentary parties placed only four of their 48 war veteran candidates in potentially winnable positions.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank ECFR’s editorial and programme teams, especially Jana Kobzova, Adam Harrison and Jeremy Cliffe, above all for the patience that working with him on this policy brief required. Their substantive comments and careful editing greatly improved how the research and its findings are presented.

He is also grateful to political scientists András Tóth-Czifra, Ekaterina Shulmann, Nikolai Petrov and David Szakonyi, as well as journalists Andrey Pertsev, Olesya Shmagun and Tatiana K., for thoughtful discussions of the early findings of this research in settings both formal and less so. Several former Russian officials, who understandably prefer to remain anonymous, also helped the author test his hypothesis that technocrats are gradually going out of fashion in Russia’s wartime bureaucracy.

The author’s deepest thanks go to the (also anonymous) respondents who taught on the federal Time of Heroes programme and generously shared their knowledge and materials.

The author would especially like to thank his wife, Dr Viktoria P., and his friend Mr Churchill the Dog, for their patience, support and very different but equally effective forms of encouragement throughout the project.

All opinions and any remaining errors are the author’s alone.

About the author

Mikhail Komin was a visiting fellow with the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations and now is a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. His analyses and commentaries have featured in international and Russian independent outlets, including The Economist, the New York Times, Politico, EUobserver, El Mundo, Meduza, TVRain and others. Komin is listed as a foreign agent by the so-called Russian Ministry of Justice.

Source

For much of the 20th century, the US represented not just a place on the map. It was also a point in time. When Western Europeans looked at images of America after the second world war—depictions of Hollywood’s glamour, American cars and newfangled labour-saving devices—they thought they were looking into the future.

The American Dream had an especially irresistible draw for Eastern Europeans behind the Iron Curtain, and for tens of millions of Chinese during the opening and reform era that began after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. China’s great economic reinvention was inspired, in part, by Deng Xiaoping’s awe at American modernity, which he witnessed firsthand during an official visit in 1979.

But fast-forward to 2026, and the positions have been reversed. For most people in most countries, the future can now be seen in China. Just as Hollywood once showed the world what modern life looked like, China is showing African, Latin American and even American young people what an economy built on green energy, mobile payments and other services, and advanced robotics looks like. For Cobus van Staden of the China-Global South Project, the West is “increasingly being framed as backward-looking [and] associated with the past”, a phenomenon presumably accelerated by Trumpism, with its rejection of renewable energy, diversity and its social conservatism.

In the global south, young people aren’t just imitating Chinese practices like drinking hot water or trying out tai chi. They are watching as China reshapes their daily experiences

In many parts of the West, disillusionment has given rise to Chinamaxxing on social media, with American and European influencers performatively embracing Chinese mannerisms and aesthetics. And in the global south, young people aren’t just imitating Chinese practices like drinking hot water or trying out tai chi. They are watching as China reshapes their daily experiences.

This signals a genuine historical rupture. For generations, most countries defined themselves in relation to the West. Some sought (or were convinced) to emulate Western development models like the Washington Consensus, and many were keen to acquire Western technology and aid, or simply to get the West’s approval. Other countries did push back against the West’s influence and attack Western hypocrisy, but their counter-models were themselves defined by opposition to the West.

Either way, West-centrism was the prism through which geopolitics was conducted and interpreted. When countries in the Sahel invited Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries to help them deal with insurgencies, it was seen as a reaction against France and its traditional role in the region. When Angola invited Sinopec to exploit its oil fields, it was seen as a snub to Portugal and Britain. And then there are the many challenges to US hegemony in the Middle East, Latin America and South-East Asia. Around the world, memories of bloody Western interventions or financial crises still linger.

Yet younger generations around the world are not even pro- or anti-Western so much as they are post-Western. For them, China, not the US, is at the centre of their conceptual universe and envisaged future.

What happened? One of the big differences between countries in the global south and the global north is their demographic profile. In the US and Europe, the median age is 40–50, compared to 19 in Nigeria, and 29 in South Africa, India and Lebanon. That means some 70% of Nigerians aren’t even old enough to have registered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq or the 2008 global financial crisis. As Cobus points out, young West Africans “never knew anything more than the US as we know it now”. The era of Donald Trump encompasses their entire political memory, and they presumably are not very impressed.

This shift in perceptions is not just an African story, of course. In Vietnam, which has long had a fraught relationship with China, young people are becoming less reflexively Sinophobic than their elders. Chelsea Nguyen, a researcher at the London School of Economics, credits the covid-19 pandemic for catalysing this change. The West’s perceived mishandling of the pandemic undermined its status as a model worthy of emulation. Many Vietnamese turned to exploring their own history and that of their Asian neighbours, including China. As in much of Africa, growing exposure to China’s rapid technological progress and Chinese consumer goods transformed the country’s global brand.

Meanwhile, Loubna El Amine, a China scholar at King’s College London, notes that in regions riven by instability—such as the Middle East, where the US itself is a big part of the problem— “a lot of the attraction of China is its absence rather than presence”. The latest Arab Opinion Index bears this out, showing that 77% of respondents view US policies as a threat to the region’s security and stability, compared with just 25% for China—and that was well before Trump launched his catastrophic war against Iran. And, of course, China carries none of the colonial baggage that complicates European interventions (or even peacebuilding efforts) in the region.

Still, China has been known to be aggressive in pursuing its economic agenda in the developing world, whether through predatory loans, acquiring critical national infrastructure or deliberately exporting its domestic overcapacity. Such behaviour ruffles feathers as much in Thailand, Mexico and Nigeria as it does in the US and Europe. Moreover, young people’s widespread distrust of their governments can easily bleed into unhappiness with China when political leaders are seen to be giving it undue privileges.

Since the pivot to China as an exemplar of modernity is in many ways pragmatic and non-ideological, its hold on the popular imagination is still tenuous. Lots of leaders in the West want to compete with China for “soft power”. But the key is not to counter Chinese “propaganda” or improve Western PR. The winners in the battle for hearts and minds will be those who offer real solutions to people’s problems and create more opportunities for prosperity than are currently available.

This article was first published by Project Syndicate on August 18th 2026

Source

European leaders losing sleep over Trump’s economic and territorial threats should spare a thought for their Canadian counterparts. On August 22nd, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney announced that his country was “at war” with the United States after trade negotiations collapsed at the eleventh hour. Trump’s subsequent renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America echoed the crisis with Greenland in January, when the US called into question Denmark’s sovereignty over the territory and refused to rule out taking it by military force.

Both the EU and Canada, in other words, face a similar conundrum: how to de-risk their relationship with an increasingly predatory United States, which exposes them to security threats from Russia and poses a new threat of its own. It is against this backdrop that Carney will attend commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the European Union Speech in Strasbourg on September 16th. An EU-Canada summit will follow in October. The timing could scarcely be better for Europe and Canada to make common cause. But if European leaders want to shift the relationship into a new gear, they will have to revise their usual approach to how the EU treats third countries, particularly in defence and security, where both sides’ dependence on the US runs deepest.

Blurring the lines

Some Canadians, traumatised by Trump’s bullying, have fantasised about joining the EU. Alas, Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union—its accession clause—restricts membership of the bloc to European states. But the EU need not choose between full membership and arm’s-length third-country status. A strict in-or-out model of security and defence co-operation risks excluding partners like Ukraine, Britain, Norway and Canada from key initiatives and the bloc’s defence technological and industrial base—leaving Europe less safe as a result.

The EU already treats one non-member as something more than an ordinary third country or even one on the path to membership: Ukraine has received notable carve-outs for the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) and the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) mechanism, which offers €150bn in low-interest defence loans—not to mention exemptions in other areas like trade, energy, and telecommunications. In other words, the question is not whether bending the rules is permissible under certain circumstances, but what those circumstances are. Extending the same treatment to Canada (as inoffensive an ally as they come) would be popular at home and would offer a template for how other relationships, including with Britain, could be structured.

There is already a clear trend towards a closer relationship between Brussels and Ottawa, especially on the defence industrial side. In 2021, Canada joined the military mobility project of the EU’s framework for deeper defence co-operation, PESCO. Last year, both sides signed a security and defence partnership and this year they agreed to Canada’s participation in SAFE.

On the bilateral front, Berlin and Ottawa are finalising a strategic partnership agreement which will include elements on defence cooperation, on top of agreements already signed with France, Denmark, and other Nordics. On the procurement side, German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems won a contest to build 12 submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy—the biggest defence deal in Canadian history. Canada is also considering buying Swedish Gripen fighter jets instead of American F-35s and is building ice-breakers in Helsinki. Finally, Canada is actively involved in deterring Russia with boots on the ground in Latvia, where it leads a multinational brigade as part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP).

But these efforts are mostly non-binding and aspirational—except for SAFE (which is time-limited) and eFP (which sits outside of EU structures entirely). The EU-Canada summit at the end of October gives Brussels and Ottawa a concrete opportunity to turn these efforts into specific investments, capabilities and operational co-operation.

Under the radar

Canada is an underrated military power. The 2% of its GDP that it currently spends on defence is already more than the 14 smallest EU defence budgets combined

The EU stands to gain more from a closer relationship than one might think. Canada is an underrated military power. The 2% of its GDP that it currently spends on defence is already more than the 14 smallest EU defence budgets combined. Compared to the EU’s biggest defence spenders, it ranks behind only Germany, France, Italy and Poland. And its budget is set to increase significantly as Canada moves to spend 4% by 2030 and C$500bn (€310bn) over the next decade.

Much of that money will be invested in equipment and suppliers outside of Canada. As Carney made clear in a recent speech: “The days of our military sending 70 cents of every dollar to the United States are over.” EU defence projects should open up to countries outside the EU and the European Economic Area. Canada’s armed forces bring significant know-how in Arctic warfare, an area of increasing interest to Europe amid growing threats from both Russia and the US. And its six decades within the joint US-Canadian air-defence command, NORAD, give it rare experience of continental-scale air defence and early warning, just as Europeans scramble to expand their own independent missile-defence network.

Deeper cooperation

The EU can use these resources and capabilities to deter Russia and wean itself off its dependence on America, starting with deeper Canadian co-operation with the EU’s defence projects and agencies. A first step would be encouraging Canada to join further PESCO projects. Canada’s expertise could be of great help in ACCESS, which aims to develop Arctic-capable, GPS-denied electronic warfare and sensor systems, and TWISTER’s space-based early warning strand. Canada could join both without too much red tape (for EU standards) because neither project is supported by the European Defence Agency (EDA). A second step would be an administrative arrangement between Canada and EDA, which would allow Canada to join EDA-supported PESCO projects it is currently ineligible for, as well as joint training, monitoring and research. Since the US already has such an arrangement, extending it to Canada should prove uncontroversial.

But the most ambitious step the EU could take would be to treat Canada as a full-fledged member of the EU’s defence technological and industrial base instead of as a third country. Member states and the commission should write Canada into EDIP’s successor, the ring-fenced defence-spending stream—or “window”—of the upcoming European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), which is currently being negotiated as part of the EU’s next budget.

As it stands, current EDIP rules will likely roll over into the ECF unchanged. Under those rules, a system built in Europe carrying 35% American components would qualify for funding, but a wholly Canadian one would not. When EDIP was being negotiated, members states deliberately created a carve-out for Ukraine. Member states should extend the same preferential terms to Canada under the ECF, but also go further, letting Canada run programmes as well as bid for them.

These would be major concessions and they must not be given away for free. The expectation should be that Canada pay for access, open its own procurement to European firms in return, and align its export controls with the EU’s. As a proof-of-concept, both sides could design at least one major system with no US export-controlled parts in it (a counter-drone system would work very well).

In addition to these efforts, Berlin and Paris should also throw their weight behind Canada’s proposal for a Defence Security and Resilience Bank. They might even propose merging it with Britain’s proposed Multilateral Defence Mechanism to create a coalition spanning Britain, Canada and EU member states.

Skin in the game

As the EU’s borders come under pressure from multiple directions, there is a strong case for expanding Canada’s stake in European territorial integrity. That begins by establishing reciprocity. Europeans shouldn’t scoff at Canadian concerns—just as Denmark flew blood bags to Greenland in anticipation of a US invasion in January, so too have the Canadian Armed Forces modelled a possible US military invasion.

European countries should make it clear to Washington that its statements calling into question its ally’s sovereignty are intolerable. They should also prevail upon Canada to unequivocally pick sides should the US raise the Greenland issue again. In the event of a future military mission to Greenland, similar to the Danish-led Operation Arctic Endurance, or even a mission under the EU’s common security and defence policy, Copenhagen should invite Ottawa to join with boots on the ground, just as it has done in Latvia. Likewise, the EU could bind its anti-coercion instrument to equivalent Canadian countermeasures, ready for joint activation during a crisis.

Boosting Ottawa’s participation in Arctic issues would tie it more closely to the defence of the region more broadly and would give it a bigger role in defending European borders. After all, no serious conversation about the region is conceivable without Canada, whose Arctic territory is vastly larger than that of most other Arctic states. Canada is already part of the region’s multilateral infrastructure, but there is still scope to deepen its co-operation with the EU instruments specifically. One way to bridge the gap would be to take up the European Parliament’s proposal to create a dedicated EU-Canada Arctic cooperation framework with structured dialogues between EU and Canadian institutions.

An additional step which would contribute decisively to European security would be to invite Canada to the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the UK-led coalition of northern European states. Canadian forces have already taken part in JEF exercises in Latvia last year and Carney has participated in virtual meetings of the group. Formally joining JEF, which sits outside NATO and EU structures, would involve little red tape and could happen almost immediately. As the US considers far-reaching troop reductions in Europe, any step that improves interoperability among non-US NATO allies is a win for the entire continent.

A price worth paying

The steps outlined above are likely to draw America’s ire and invite retaliation. The US has repeatedly cast scorn on Carney’s middle powers strategy—an effort to rally mid-sized states against pressure from larger ones—which it increasingly views as a serious challenge to its primacy. Under-secretary of war for policy Elbridge Colby recently suspended the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, a longstanding US-Canadian strategic consultative body, and linked the pause to Canada’s weak defence spending and its middle powers strategy. Both the EU and Canada should expect increasing pushback if they embark on this joint course. But any American paroxysm will prove the point—that both Europe and Canada are better off together than alone or in thrall to Washington. If that means blurring the boundaries between EU member states and third countries, so be it.

Source

Summary

• To find out what “Europe” means to people today, ECFR commissioned almost 6,000 interviews in six European countries and qualitative desk research across 15 more.
• The interviews reveal that most people have strong opinions about Europe and its future; the complementary research found that geopolitical chaos and culture wars are helping the EU become more politicised in domestic debates.
• How people feel about Europe may thus affect how they vote in the potentially seismic domestic elections to come, in many of which the far right leads in the polls.
• The interviews also found many people want a stronger, more independent and more united Europe. But relatively few can picture a credible route from today’s disruptions to that destination.
• This imagination gap is most prevalent among a pivotal constituency we call “the uncertain”. Pro-European leaders need to fill it, lest people become more receptive to politics that reinterpret the past as the future.
• These leaders can do so by harnessing the power of “future nostalgia”, or a longing for a time when a better future seemed within reach.

Broken records

“Europe leaves me completely indifferent.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1970s01

For decades, Europe had quite a successful record. Its countries grew accustomed to living under America’s protection, trading freely with one another, and enjoying peace and prosperity at home. Borders opened and the EU expanded. Europe came to think of itself as one of the world’s economic and political centres of gravity—or even a model for others to follow.

But then, one by one, the cosy assumptions on which Europe had built its post-cold-war existence began to fall apart. It was time for Europe to change its tune. As European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen put it, there was “no time or room for nostalgia… this must be Europe’s independence moment”. Leaders across the continent offered variations on the same theme: Europe must become stronger, more united and more independent.

As the months passed, parts of the public saw Europe moving in that direction. But many others concluded different things from the same events. For some, the disruptions had exposed a system that had long been dysfunctional and captured by elites. Others hesitated, realising that the danger could finally stir Europe from its slumber but that it could also expose divisions impossible to overcome. And then there were some like the Frenchman quoted at the start of this section who just did not care: Europe was and always had been a background hum that barely registered in their lives.

This paper shows that people with views like his are in a minority. “Europe” may not be the most important issue in people’s lives, but it is something a lot of them care about. How people feel about Europe may thus affect how they vote at home and contribute to how much say the far right has in shaping the future of the continent.

The paper draws on 5,834 AI-moderated interviews with European citizens conducted in May and June 2026 in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. These capture how ordinary people, in their own words, imagine Europe’s future. They also provide (after weighting) a nationally representative picture of how people’s views are distributed. The interviews are complemented by comparative desk research on public and political debates in 15 EU member states. This examined how Europe and the EU are discussed across national political and media environments.

The main finding of the research is that many Europeans have an “imagination gap”. A lot of the people interviewed—especially among a substantial group we call the “uncertain”—want a stronger, more integrated and more independent Europe. But they often struggle to picture a credible route from today’s disruptions to that destination. The complementary research finds this gap exists at a time when Europe and the EU are becoming more salient in the public debate, and more politicised.

The people we spoke to are hardly alone in their pessimism. ECFR’s 2025 polling revealed Europeans to be notably gloomy about the future of their countries and the world, and that Americans and Turks shared similar sentiments. But 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.

So, the imagination gap could help explain why nostalgic politics has become attractive to some voters in Europe. When people struggle to imagine a believable tomorrow, they become more receptive to visions that reinterpret the past as the future. But pro-European leaders should aim to harness a different kind of nostalgia—a “future nostalgia”, to borrow Dua Lipa’s 2020 album title, or a longing for the sense that a better future was within reach. They may need to hurry. As Europe braces for national elections in several influential countries, some with the far right leading in the polls, pro-Europeans need to help ensure a recognisable Europe exists to defend in the years ahead.

Europe’s alarm bells

“Go back to sleep; things are going downhill.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1950s02

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.

Respondents speak of Europe’s awakening most often in Poland (21%). This is the most recent one of the six countries studied to join the EU and is closest to the Ukrainian war zone. According to one Pole, born in the 1980s, “Europe is doing reasonably well. It’s trying to strengthen itself and be more independent from the USA.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in the 1980s03 Or, to quote an older respondent in Germany, where just 13% of people raise these themes, “Crises make you stronger, and I think that applies to Europe as well. Investment in defence is increasing again. The crises have revealed the weak points, and we can start working on them.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1960s04 Such voices of encouragement are particularly sparse in France, where a mere 5% of respondents describe today’s Europe in terms of awakening or renewal. This is despite a decade of calls for “strategic autonomy” from President Emmanuel Macron.

When it comes to naming Europe’s challenges, people most often talk about war and security, followed by economic pressures. But almost three-quarters of the people interviewed say Europe is coping badly with its greatest challenges. For this, they blame national governments twice as often as European institutions and EU leaders. According to a French respondent, born in the 1960s, “Leaders of the countries do what suits their own country; they don’t see unity and don’t want it.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1960s05

Turning to where things are heading, the AI asks: “Some people say that Europe’s future is in danger. How do you react when you hear that?” In response to this, on average 56% agree, against only 21% who disagree.

Still, many of the people interviewed identify strongly with Europe and want it to flourish. When asked what they would like Europe to look like in 20 years, three-quarters describe a positive European vision. They most often talk about unity and political integration, peace and security, and prosperity and well-being. Only around 13% hope for “less Europe” or for the EU’s dissolution.

But big dreams about Europe often come with big doubts. As one German, born in the 1990s, says: “I’m regularly relieved that I live in Europe. It’s not perfect and some things are going in the wrong direction at the moment, but no region in the world is safer, freer and more democratic.” He sees “climate catastrophe and attacks on democracy from the far right” as the greatest challenges facing Europe today—but does not think Europe is handling them very well. Asked about the reasons for this, he replies: “Elections focus too much on the here and now and not enough on the future.” Thinking about Europe in 20 years, he would like it to be “free, democratic, sustainable, less indebted, politically further to the left [and] peaceful”. But, on whether this is likely to happen, his response is a brusque: “No”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1990s06.

Across the countries covered by our interviews, many conversations followed a similar pattern. 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.

Four tunes

And how would you like Europe to look in 20 years’ time?

“Like Poland is now.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in the 1950s07

Most of the people interviewed express strong opinions about Europe’s future. And they tend to imagine that future in one of four ways.

The positive hear an anthem of renewal: today’s disruptions are finally forcing Europe to become stronger and more united. The negative hear a ballad of decline, with each new crisis confirming the continent’s best days are behind it. For the uncertain, the melody of a better Europe is recognisable, but the song is not finished—and they are not convinced it ever will be. Very few people belong to the disconnected, for whom Europe is just a background hum coming from too far away to command much attention.

The tunes vary by country. But the four basic themes recur across borders, genders and generations.

The positive

Europe’s future is not a scary place for the positives. “Fundamentally, the EU is still a good story,”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1970s08 says one German, born in the 1970s, who votes for the centre-left Greens. “It still has a bright future ahead of it,”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 2000s09 asserts a supporter of the leftist France Unbowed (LFI), who was born in the 2000s. Just under 20% of the people interviewed belong to this group of optimists.

The present: The positive identify strongly as European, and two-fifths of them describe the EU’s situation today in terms of awakening. They are well represented in the electorates of EU-enthusiastic parties like the centrist Civic Coalition in Poland, Liberal Democrats in Britain and D66 in the Netherlands, as well as left-leaning EU-fans like the German Greens and the UK’s Labour Party.

Many of this group see the disruptions of the present as giving the EU the shock it perhaps always needed for its leaders to push for greater European integration and autonomy. One Dutch D66 voter, born in the 1980s, describes this as “a sense of urgency, the realisation that we must stand up for ourselves”. He stresses “a shared awareness from the population”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 1980s10 as contributing most to this.

The future: This is not to say the positive think it will be easy. They recognise that to overcome Europe’s problems, political will and institutional reform will be necessary. Many of this group also think the EU will have to address the national vetoes that hinder collective action.

It is common among the positive to worry about the rise of the far right, but they still tend to believe change is possible precisely because the alternative has become so visible: a fragmented Europe, dependent on others and unable to defend itself or its interests. “Five years ago, I think there was more of an illusion of stability,” says one Italian, born in the 1990s, but “today many things are more explicit … so I’d say [Europe has become] more unstable but more honest compared to before.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1990s11

Still, most of the positive disagree with the idea that Europe’s future is in danger. “It’s a very serious crisis, but I think that with wise policymaking [the danger] can be avoided,”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1990s12 says a Civic Coalition voter in Poland. Members of this group want Europe to show leadership and assertiveness internationally. And in 20 years, most of them hope to see a more united and better integrated Europe. They also tend to believe such a future is achievable.

In the world of the positive, the EU does not need to take a fundamentally different direction; rather, it needs to become what it was always meant to be. “We have it in our hands,” says a Dutch D66 voter, born in the 1980s, who has “doubts about the pace, not the direction”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 1980s13.

The negative

At the other end of the spectrum sit the negative. This is the largest group in every country studied, except the Netherlands, and is home to almost half of respondents in France, Italy and Germany. The negative hold a near-hegemonic position in the electorates of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), National Rally (RN) in France and Reform UK. They are also strongly present on the Polish right and far right, among Party for Freedom (PVV) voters in the Netherlands, and in the electorate of the progressive populist Five Star Movement in Italy. They are well represented among non-voters in Italy, Germany and Poland, too.

The present: The negative stand out in their strong criticism of today’s Europe, which is characterised by a notable anti-elitist and anti-migrant streak. One Italian, born in the 1980s, describes Europe as: “A community run by people who have only thought about their own well-being until now; they’ve ruined our lives with surreal green ideologies, financing unjust wars, opening up to immigration that is destroying European identity and that of member states. [They are] unprepared on the military front [and] divided as peoples both in terms of collective thinking and economically.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1980s14

Such pessimism is not always rooted in opposition to European cooperation. Many of the negative instead rail against what they consider the EU’s over-reach: “The EU is pushing itself literally everywhere, even into areas where it was never granted any competencies,”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1980s15 says one Pole, born in the 1980s, who votes for the radical-right Konfederacja. It is common for people in this group to describe politicians as self-interested, captured by lobbies or too removed from ordinary life to be able to do the right thing. Negatives tend to interpret the crises piling up—and this group cites migration and inflation above all—as symptoms of deeper decay: “I feel sad for what once was a great place,”Read the extended quote from A European from the UK, born in the 1960s16 says a Reform UK voter, born in the 1960s.

The future: For most of the negative, Europe’s future looks bleak. But variation exists in how they feel about this. One Pole, who was born in the 1980s and votes for the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), agrees Europe’s future is in danger and is “pleased about it.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1980s17 Her Italian peer, who votes for the ruling Brothers of Italy party, expresses fear and anxiety: “I am afraid,” she says, before adding, “of war.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1980s18 Asked about her hopes for Europe in 20 years, she mulls whether the EU will still exist. Other negatives actively want the EU to be whittled down or dismantled altogether. As they see it, less or no Europe would restore national sovereignty and give citizens a more direct say in how they are governed. Some of them want to recover what they feel they have lost: “We lived much better when the European Union didn’t exist,”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1950s19 says an RN voter in France, born in the 1950s.

The uncertain

Somewhere between the negative and the positive dwell the uncertain. This group accounts for around a third of the public in most of the countries studied (but only around a quarter in Britain). They are common among the electorates of left-wing parties in all six countries, though they also feature prominently among voters of the ruling centre-right parties in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.

The present: More than half of the uncertain identify strongly as European. Yet they rarely describe Europe today in terms of “awakening” and often bring up themes of decay and loss of normality. “Europe is doing badly, the different countries are not united, and we are facing a war on our doorstep,”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1960s20 says a French respondent born in the 1960s, who votes for Macron’s Renaissance party.

People in this group often see the case for optimism and pessimism alike. They recognise that the EU has made it through crises before and that the threats of today are producing solidarity. They tend to see support for Ukraine, developments in defence cooperation and the gradual reduction of dependence on the US as indicators that something is shifting for the better.

But political will appears fragile to the uncertain. They worry that nationalist and far-right forces could unravel European cooperation and that a gulf exists between European leaders’ words and their deeds. According to a Polish progressive, born in the 1990s, the EU suffers from a “lack of a common direction, disagreement amongst member states, poor ideas being implemented by force.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1990s21 Another Pole points to “lack of imagination among politicians, the habit that Europe doesn’t need to take responsibility for itself because someone will always save us.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1980s22

The future: When the uncertain think about the future, they worry. Most of them believe Europe’s future is in danger and what becomes of the EU will depend on choices that leaders have not yet made. Like the positive, most uncertain want Europe to become more united and integrated—but they are much less confident that it will.

A Social Democrat (SPD) voter in Germany, born in the 1960s, hopes for a “solid, united union”. But asked whether this could become reality, he says: “I have great doubts about it.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1960s23 A liberal voter from Italy, born in the 1990s, dreams of a “more united, more efficient [Europe], able to harness the strength of its single market and with a long-term vision for the future.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1990s24 But he doubts this will materialise. Meanwhile, his Dutch peer, who is a D66 voter, hopes for a Europe that is “green, peaceful and safe” but gives just a “fifty-fifty”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 1990s25 chance of this vision becoming reality.

The disconnected

The disconnected account for only around a tenth of the public in most countries studied, except in Britain, where (perhaps reflecting the country’s non-EU status and the legacy of Brexit) their share rises to 22%. They feature in the electorates of every party but almost never constitute more than 15%. The only exception is the UK’s Conservative Party, in which they account for almost a third.

The present: This group sees Europe’s future as largely not their business because they do not experience it as central to their lives (and this often extends to politics in general). “I don’t ask myself all these political questions,”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1990s26 says a French respondent, born in the 1990s. Asked to describe today’s Europe to a friend who had just woken from a five-year sleep, a Pole born in the 1980s replies: “Mate. You’ve only just woken up and that’s the first question you’re asking?”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1980s27 A Dutch respondent, born in the 1990s, is more direct still: “I just live my life the way I want, and Europe or whatever doesn’t interest me.”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 1990s28 Their responses to questions concerning Europe tend to be brief and evasive—don’t know, no idea, don’t care.

The future: When asked what they want Europe to look like in 20 years, the disconnected tend to reach for similar answers: more or less the same, no idea, it doesn’t matter. They are animated neither by fear of European collapse nor by hope for European renewal (although many still describe today’s Europe in terms of deterioration or a loss of normality). For the disconnected, the EU is largely a background institution. It occasionally affects prices and makes rules but otherwise feels remote from everyday life and domestic concerns. This group is unlikely to have much say in Europe’s political direction.

***

That role as a pivotal constituency belongs to the uncertain. This is not to say they are the only ones suffering from an imagination gap. Three-quarters of them are, but so are almost half of the negative and a third of the disconnected. Overall, about half of the European public seem to have an imagination gap. Poland is the exception: only around a third show symptoms there.

What makes the uncertain so pivotal, apart from the group’s size, is that they have not decided where things will end up. This distinguishes them from the positive, for whom Europe is already succeeding; the negative, many of whom have concluded that it cannot; and the disconnected, who just aren’t that bothered. Pro-European leaders will therefore need to focus their attention on filling the imagination gap among the uncertain, particularly given the growing salience and contestation of the EU in the public debate.

European rhapsody

“The first time I drank a milkshake with a paper straw at McDonald’s, it was a disgusting experience.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1990s29

The dominance of strong opinions about Europe—positive, negative and uncertain—in the interviews aligns with our complementary research across 15 countries. That research suggests “Europe” has become more prominent in the public debate and thus more politically salient. This is corroborated by findings from other research that points to growing identification with Europe throughout the crises.

Three overlapping dynamics seem to be driving these developments.

First, foreign policy upheavals mean geopolitical questions of European power and vulnerability have landed squarely on people’s kitchen tables. Should we prepare for war? Can our countries defend themselves alone? If not, whom should they consider as their key allies—Americans or other Europeans? And is the EU, conceived as a peace project, still fit for purpose in times of “unpeace”?

Second, the EU is becoming “domesticated”. This is because the bloc’s policymaking increasingly reaches into some of the most politically sensitive areas of people’s lives (migration, climate and the cost of living, for example). Some member states, like Greece and Cyprus, experienced this well before others. In their case, the euro-zone crisis led to a lasting slump in public trust towards the EU.

But now the EU is in the limelight almost everywhere, in part because of Brussels-led policy initiatives. These policy choices are testing people’s vague or instinctive pro-Europeanism against consequences they feel. Should the EU spend more on defence? Is it a good idea to ban plastic straws, or phase out diesel cars and fossil fuel boilers? Should all European countries have mandatory refugee quotas? Such decisions can nudge European citizens towards developing more concrete pro-European attitudes. But they can also make their views more conditional, critical or ambivalent.

Finally, some political actors are stoking the culture wars. As I argued in last year’s Sentiment Compass, “Europe” is a target in the Trumpist political project and those of like-minded forces on this side of the Atlantic. Some well-known social media moguls and platforms play an active and polarising role in this. European far-right politicians need not support Trump or advertise closeness to his administration to draw on a similar repertoire: Brussels is bureaucratic; Europe is weak; the mainstream is ideologically captured; European institutions are obstacles to national sovereignty and cultural authenticity. Such narratives contest what “Europe” is for. They also call into question whose values it represents and whether its institutions deserve citizens’ allegiance.

This is not to say greater salience always translates into less support for a stronger, more united Europe. It can also open up space for a more serious debate in which pro-Europeans can clarify and update the case for integration. Geopolitical insecurity, for example, can strengthen the perceived value of European cooperation in the eyes of the public, as a growing pro-Europeanism of Danes and Swedes suggests.

The politicisation gap

But greater salience can push people to start feeling anxious about Europe’s future. It also strengthens the temptation for political forces to convert the EU into one of the main political and electoral battlegrounds. This is especially the case on the far right. The AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, for example, has called for Germany to leave the euro zone and the Schengen area; President Karol Nawrocki in Poland attacks European “follies”. They and others, like RN leader Marine Le Pen, seem to have concluded that trolling the EU gives them a language through which they can explain who they are. Such figures also use it as shorthand for what they oppose and what future they offer.

Pro-European political leaders often struggle to respond with the same confidence. Some react with unconditional defence of the EU (for instance, the Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten and his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez). But that can stop them addressing people’s anxieties about Europe. Other leaders, including Donald Tusk in Poland and Friedrich Merz in Germany, offer a trimmed pro-Europeanism instead (for example, by posing as “realist” on migration and climate). This might bring them closer to a median national voter, but it also risks making far-right views about Europe look more normal.

Leaders thus tend to preach to the positives or bow down to the negatives. Yet it is among Europe’s uncertain that belief in Europe’s future is up for grabs. If the uncertain’s anxieties remain unaddressed, they could veer away from pro-European parties or even detach from politics altogether. And if people choose not to vote or to vote for far-right or Eurosceptic parties in their national elections, the entire continent could move in a direction that renders it unrecognisable in 20 years’ time. This is not to mention that it could become more vulnerable to Russia and even Europe’s old friend across the Atlantic.

One example of how things could be done differently comes from Romania. Speaking on television on Europe Day, President Nicusor Dan offered a nuanced view. He accepted that Europe has made mistakes, but at the same time defended its capacity for self-correction. In a country that has become highly polarised, this may have been an instinctive appeal to Romania’s version of the uncertain.

Other pro-Europeans who take the uncertain seriously may also be able to come up with a better response. In their voting preferences and media habits, the uncertain resemble the positive much more than the negative. (For more evidence, see the bonus track at the end of this paper.) Yet, when asked about Europe’s future, they do not share the positives’ confidence. And if these voters already inhabit relatively pro-European political and media environments (and, as discussed, identify strongly with Europe), their doubts cannot be explained only by exposure to Eurosceptic parties, hostile media and culture wars. Something other than old-school pro-Europeanism might thus be necessary to make them believe in Europe again.   

Chords of doubt

“I would like Europe to behave less fearfully.”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 2000s30

Three recurring concerns appear to be holding the uncertain back: they doubt whether Europe can act when it needs to; whether it can live up to the values it professes and command respect; and whether it can really keep Europeans safe.

European slowness

One of the most striking findings from the interviews was that, across the six countries, respondents often mention Europe’s “slowness” as one of its most frustrating characteristics. This theme comes up most often in the Netherlands and Germany (where Merz once criticised the EU’s “massive over-bureaucratisation of almost all parts of life”). Positive and negative respondents also mention slowness, but the uncertain talk about it even more than any other group.

Many of the uncertain focus on the pace of decision-making. One millennial German, who voted for the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in 2025 but now prefers the SPD, complains that “the bureaucratic apparatus is far too large and cumbersome. It takes far too long for a decision to be made. Some issues need to be addressed quickly, but by the time everything has gone through all the levels and member states, it’s usually already too late.” Asked who is responsible, he blames both sides: “EU institutions are too bureaucratic and bloated, and the member states don’t want to give up any responsibility or authority whatsoever.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1980s31

For others, the problem is more structural. As a young Pole, born in the 2000s and looking beyond the mainstream parties, puts it: “The EU fundamentally discusses a lot but does nothing.” He attributes this partly to “the culture of operation of the states with the greatest influence in the EU.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 2000s32 A Bavarian, born in the 1970s, who voted CDU/CSU in 2025 but is considering switching parties, says: “Everything takes far too long. By the time Europe reaches agreements, years have passed or nothing happens because one EU country is against it.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1970s33 Her solution is to replace unanimity with, for example, a three-quarters majority. Similarly, a Dutch respondent who used to vote for the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, born in the 1970s, complains about “Lengthy consultations [and] little or slow decision-making,”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 1970s34 blaming member states for this.

But something else emerges from these conversations besides familiar complaints about Brussels bureaucracy. In a faster-moving and more dangerous world, slowness becomes a measure of Europe’s (in)ability to act.

A German man, born in the 1960s, links cumbersome procedures to declining competitiveness: “If a simple approval procedure in Europe takes years and sometimes decades, nobody can compete with such an industry-friendly society as in the USA, China or India.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1960s35 His compatriot, a Green voter born in the 1990s, goes further, describing Europe as being “in an odd in-between state between the old and a new world order”. Because of regulation and bureaucratic hurdles, she argues, Europe is “not really able to adapt quickly enough and is being massively overtaken technologically by Asia and the USA.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in 1990s36

So, slowness makes the future the uncertain want hard to believe in. If Europe aspires to become more sovereign and competitive, as several European leaders have promised, then the uncertain first need to see evidence that the EU can make decisions and implement them—and that it can react quickly enough to the fast-changing global environment. This might require the EU to eliminate national vetoes in some areas. Or smaller groups of countries could lead on some initiatives when unanimity between countries is impossible to reach. But whatever the actions, they need to challenge the overwhelming impression of Europe being unable to act. Otherwise, too many people will continue to have the same impression as a British Labour voter, born in the 1990s, according to whom Europe simply “feels slow”Read the extended quote from A European from the UK, born in the 1990s37.

European hypocrisy

The second chord of doubt relates to perceptions of Europe’s lack of integrity. This theme is most common among the negative, but the uncertain also raise it fairly often. It comes up regularly among uncertain supporters of more radical left-wing parties, like LFI in France, Die Linke in Germany, and the Green Party in Britain. Yet the negative and uncertain focus on different things. The negative tend to focus on the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the political class; the uncertain are more likely to point to moments when Europe disappointed them.

Complaints among the uncertain take two main forms: Europe failing to live by the values it professes, and Europe failing to stand its ground when confronted by more powerful actors.

On double standards: “First the silence. Then the hypocrisy”, says an LFI voter who was born in the 1990s. “Russia attacks Ukraine; Russia is the villain. Israel attacks Palestine, but they’re terrorists. It doesn’t make sense.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1990s38

On a lack of courage, the EU’s tariff agreement with Donald Trump’s administration seems to have become a powerful symbol. A Die Linke voter in Germany, born in the 2000s, says he felt “terribly ashamed” when “von der Leyen just caved in to the US”. He found it “really embarrassing personally, that we capitulated so hard”. For him, the episode represented something larger: “Every time the EU capitulates, it shows … we don’t want to do anything and would rather cling to the old status quo.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 2000s39

The disappointment about the tariffs crosses political boundaries. A Renaissance voter in France, born in the 1950s, was similarly ashamed of the tariff agreement. She saw it as “Letting ourselves be led by the nose by a madman,”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1950s40 and used even stronger words to describe what she saw as von der Leyen’s submission to Trump.

Nor does the accusation come only from those who want Europe to confront America or Israel more forcefully. A German, born in the 1980s, who previously voted Green but has since shifted towards Die Linke, is disappointed by what she considers insufficient support for Ukraine. “The usual hypocrisy,” she says. “Words are easy to say—actually providing real help is another matter. It requires genuine action.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1980s41

This is particularly damaging given European leaders’ rhetoric about sovereignty and independence. The uncertain observe a distance between the Europe they are told is entering its “independence moment” and the one they see backing down when confronted by a stronger power. This does not mean they reject compromises as such, given compromising is something all political actors need to do. But for many uncertain, giving in on values is a no-go. One German, born in the 2000s, was also ashamed of the tariff agreement with Trump but saw it as a demonstration of a broader pattern: “The EU no longer stands unreservedly behind its values. Everything becomes a compromise solution; no solution is confined to true values.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 2000s42

As the “Samples of hope” section will show, shared values come first when the uncertain are asked to explain what being European means for them. So, when leaders in Europe appear to be compromising on these values in their foreign policy, this not only tarnishes Europe’s image abroad but also comes with a political cost at home. The challenge for leaders is to show that people can still take seriously both the values Europe professes and the claims it makes about its own power.

European insecurity

The third chord of doubt is about people’s feelings of insecurity. Half of the uncertain describe war and security as Europe’s greatest challenge. The positive mention it just about as often, but they also tend to refer to the more strategic notion of “geopolitical autonomy” (which fewer of the uncertain do); the negative divide their attention more evenly between inflation, immigration and war.

The uncertain tend to connect insecurity to broader European vulnerabilities, such as dependence on America. They also talk about the EU’s internal divisions and the rise of the European far right. “The USA will increasingly withdraw and Europe must be able to defend itself,”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in the 1980s43 says a German, born in the 1980s, who previously voted SPD and now leans Green. She links this to concerns about the possibility of the AfD entering government and the divisions this could create in the face of Russia. A progressive Dutch voter, born in 2000s, makes a similar connection: “I’m worried about poor cooperation and that Europe is therefore less resilient to external threats—for example Russia, but also the US which wants to portray Europe as weak.”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in the 2000s44

This is not far removed from the positive vision of a more autonomous Europe. The difference lies in the extent of the imagination gap. A Renaissance voter in France, born in the 1950s, describes “war on Europe’s doorstep” as a major problem. But thinking about Europe’s response makes her feel “Europe is doing what it can, but it doesn’t actually have the means.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in the 1950s45

Finally, one Italian Five Star Movement voter, born in the 1960s, connects insecurity back to Europe’s slowness. “The first [challenge] is certainly security because the war near our borders has changed the general atmosphere,” she says. But Europe is not tackling it well because “there is often a lack of speed and unity in decision-making.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1960s46

***

The imagination gap among the uncertain thus comes from things they believe they can observe. They see decisions that take too long, aspirations that sound hollow and threats Europe may lack the means to confront. To close the gap, leaders will have to offer more than an attractive vision of the future. They will have to show people Europe can act, command respect and protect them.

Samples of hope

“I adore Sánchez, and Macron gives me orgasms when he treats Trump badly.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in the 1960s47

Still, if everything were gloomy in the world of the uncertain, they would belong among the negative. Like the positive, though, they often invoke shared values and principles when explaining what being European means to them. When asked what they would like Europe to look like in 20 years, many hope for greater European unity and political integration. They can also usually identify moments when Europe made them proud.

All these can serve as potential “samples of hope” for pro-European leaders to reconnect with the uncertain. But two aspects appear politically the most crucial: their memories of when Europe made them proud and the type of leadership they admire.

Memory bank

Politicians need to be able to tap into people’s best memories about Europe. When asked about moments when they felt proud of Europe or of being European, the uncertain can usually reach into their own experience and find evidence of Europe behaving in ways they value. This suggests that their attachment to Europe does not come from aspiration alone.

The examples differ widely and reflect the varied national histories of the respondents. They also come from people’s diverse political outlooks and personal experiences—from witnessing the opening of borders to participating in the Erasmus programme of academic exchange.

More than 70 years since European integration began, people still recognise how remarkable the beginning of the story was (even if they were born decades later). As a young Pole, born in the 1990s, says, “Europe emerged from a tremendous crisis after the [second world] war and rose above its divisions—that’s a great reason for pride.”Read the extended quote from A European from Poland, born in 1990s48

Her German peer, a Die Linke voter, remembers feeling proud “When we collectively took in refugees during the [2015] refugee crisis.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in 1990s49 Another German of similar age points to the moment “when we supported Ukraine and restricted the USA regarding Greenland.”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in 1990s50

A French respondent, born in the 1950s, remembers the 2015 terrorist attacks in his country and the solidarity they generated across the continent: “I had the impression that Europe was entirely with us, the French, and I felt proud to be part of this union.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in 1950s51

A Briton, born in the 1980s, points both to the EU’s “big bang” enlargement in 2004 and to Europe’s united response after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which showed that “we had a common sense of ideals.”Read the extended quote from A European from the UK, born in the 1980s52 Another British respondent, born in the 1950s, cites Europe’s “solidarity and courage”Read the extended quote from A European from the UK, born in the 1950s53 in standing up to Trump and staying out of the war in Iran.

For an Italian, born in the 1990s, the defining moment was the covid-19 pandemic, when European institutions intervened with economic support and helped secure vaccine distribution. What impressed him was that “for once the interests of individual countries were set aside to advance a broad-reaching, visionary and solidaristic intervention.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in 1990s54 “A much older Italian recalls the 1976 earthquake in Friuli and the aid received from other Europeans.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in 1940s55

People’s national experiences offer particularly vivid sources of pride. Respondents in Poland often point to their country’s accession to the EU, and the freedom of movement that followed. In the Netherlands, respondents mention the introduction of the euro and European support for Ukraine—but also, rather wonderfully, the “Eurovision Song Contest.”Read the extended quote from A European from the Netherlands, born in 1990s56

The pattern underneath these scattered memories is that people tend to feel proud when European countries act collectively in accordance with something respondents value. When the EU shows solidarity, for example, or protects freedoms. Or when the bloc overcomes national divisions to stand up to external pressure. Or when the EU shows European cooperation can make things happen that individual countries could not achieve alone.

This is almost the mirror image of the hypocrisy described in the previous section. Shame arises when Europe’s leaders proclaim values but fail to act on them, or talk about power while appearing unable to exercise it. Pride wells up when words and actions come together.

These memories thus provide something the uncertain otherwise struggle to find: evidence that collective European agency is possible. Europe has acted. It has overcome national differences. It has shown solidarity. It has occasionally behaved with the ambition and courage the uncertain would like to see more consistently.

Given how much bad news about Europe people see, any piece of good news has a strong chance of standing out and being remembered. Indeed, some people actively seek out more promising stories. One example was the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary after 16 years in government. This was fresh in respondents’ minds at the time the interviews took place and was mentioned more than sporadically in the conversations, including among the uncertain. They would certainly welcome more good news like this.

Faces of change

The second sample of hope might prove politically harder to act on. This is about national leaders being able to offer principled leadership at the European level, so that the promise of Europe’s renewal can have a face attached to it. The song of Europe needs its lead singers to tell, and show, people who the leads are—not only who and what they are against.

As things stand, respondents struggle to name any countries, institutions or political figures that would represent, in their eyes, positive examples of European action. Almost half of the respondents (44%) fail to mention anyone; this is also the case among the uncertain. When they do mention someone, they often point to their own country or the leader of the party they vote for.

One European leader bucks this trend: Sánchez. Across the six countries polled (which did not include Spain), 8% mentioned Sánchez specifically, or Spain under his watch, as positive examples. No other country or leader generated comparable admiration. Sánchez and Spain proved especially popular in Italy, where (quite remarkably) a quarter of respondents referred to them, and in France, where 1 in 10 did. In both places, left-wing voters were particularly fond of the Spanish example. And the popularity of Spain and Sánchez was equally visible among positive and uncertain voters, with 10% of each group mentioning them as an example worth following.

According to a Five Star Movement voter in Italy, born in the 1960s, “perhaps the one who seems to want to do something is Sánchez.”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in 1960s57 A German Green voter, born in the 1950s, shares that feeling. A good example? “Spain. Excellent how Mr Sánchez stands up to the USA,”Read the extended quote from A European from Germany, born in 1950s58 she says. Another Italian, born in the 1960s, offers a glimpse of what some voters might consider so worthy of admiration. What role would she like Europe to play in the world? “It should have the courage to say no, as Sánchez has already done in Spain,”Read the extended quote from A European from Italy, born in 1960s59 she says. The Italian quoted at the beginning of this section was more direct still.

Sánchez is a controversial figure. His country lags the rest of Europe in terms of defence spending, even if it has raised its level from previous lows. He is unpopular at home and often seen as using international activity to repair struggling domestic ratings. He does not have many friends in other European capitals, and even fellow social democrats from Denmark criticised his government’s migration policy in reaction to events in Ceuta over the summer. And as the leader of a country far away from Russia and Ukraine, he can afford more assertiveness vis-à-vis the US than his peers in Berlin or Warsaw. 

But it is hard to dismiss the fact that today hardly any European leader offers an equally principled foreign policy stance. It is also rare for leaders to place Europe so centrally in their politics, and say things like: “We defend Europe because we can no longer conceive of any other way of being and existing in the world,” or, “the EU is the greatest project of peace and unity in history.”  

Macron used to offer a similar form of leadership, using his speeches and interviews to urge other countries to boost Europe’s strategic autonomy. But, as he prepares for retirement and deals with a divided parliament, his star has clearly faded. Across the six countries studied, just 4% mention him as a positive example (though this still puts him in second place). And apart from these two, hardly any other politician not from the respondent’s own country—not even von der Leyen—is mentioned more than sporadically as a positive example. Undoubtedly, there is a vacuum here.

***

Taken together, the conversations suggest that the foundations for belief in the future extend well beyond committed Europhiles. The uncertain retain a language of European belonging, a relatively clear sense of the Europe they would like to see, and memories of moments when collective European action made them proud. Yet they still need convincing that the moments of pride can become the norm in the future, not exceptional memories of the past. And Europe often lacks leaders the uncertain consider an example worth following. 

Future nostalgia (reprise)

“The EU has disappointed me so much. But I hope that one day I’ll be able to be proud and talk about historical moments when Europe did good things for the world.”Read the extended quote from A European from France, born in 2000s60

Pro-European leaders cannot afford to be naive about the contested information environment in which arguments (and falsehoods) about Europe circulate. But Europe’s imagination gap cannot be fact-checked away or repaired with the help of influencers alone. Many of the doubts our interviews uncovered come from what people believe they can see with their own eyes. The uncertain and many people in other groups resent decisions that take too long and principles that the EU applies inconsistently. They also see a continent that still seems unable to guarantee its own security or even stand up to those who threaten it. These are matters of policy as much as communication.

In their policymaking and communications, pro-European leaders should take a broader political lesson from our research. This paper has shown how geopolitics and culture wars combine with the domestication of EU policy to increase the salience of Europe in national political competition. But the mainstream has too often participated in this politicisation by offering an unconditional defence of Europe against its critics or by ceding ground to them.

The problem with blind defence is that it polarises voters into “for” and “against” Europe. Some leaders therefore risk treating people’s doubts about Europe’s performance as evidence of insufficient commitment. This could end up alienating the uncertain voters who identify strongly with Europe but who doubt whether what they want for the continent will come to pass. By moving closer to Eurosceptic or far-right views, other leaders allow their opponents to define what is wrong with Europe and what policies might rectify that.

So, pro-European leaders need to take back control of Europe’s politicisation. They should start by going beyond defence of the status quo. Uncertain voters already want the things the mainstream defends, but they worry that something not quite as rosy may lie ahead. To address these anxieties, leaders should acknowledge Europe’s slowness and inconsistencies. They should also speak openly about the EU’s policy failures. But they must offer clear ideas of their own about how to correct them, spelling out why dismantling the capacity Europeans have built together will do nothing of the sort.

But Europe’s mainstream also needs to change its relationship with time. When EU and national leaders alike offer grand visions but do not show how they intend to get there, people seem to doubt they ever will. But showing only small steps with no clear destination looks like crisis management. Leaders need to connect the two more explicitly.

If they do not, the past may become an even more attractive place for people to look for direction. Nostalgic politics thrives on offering familiarity in place of possibility, repackaging versions of yesterday as answers to tomorrow. This is proving only too successful. Far-right parties lead in the polls in several member states, with the AfD winning the largest share of votes in a regional election in Germany in early September. The same weekend as the AfD’s seismic triumph, Britain saw masked protesters clad head to toe in black march on the south coast, just after Reform UK leader Nigel Farage signed a pact with Le Pen’s protégé Jordan Bardella to “stop the boats” crossing the English Channel. All these parties and their many kin across Europe sell the vision of the past as the future. All these parties, in power, would also likely attempt to enact policy agendas to weaken Europe and dismantle its frameworks of cooperation.

Pro-European leaders urgently need to put Europe’s past to work for a different purpose. The conversations in this paper are full of memories of moments when Europe acted collectively, overcame national divisions, stood by its principles or simply made people proud to belong. Leaders will need to help those memories become evidence: reminders that European collective action is possible and that periods of crisis need not last forever. This is the possibility contained in “future nostalgia”. Its promise lies not in a longing to return to yesterday, but in a desire to gain a sense that the tomorrow people want is within reach.

Practical politics with a horizon

So, Europe needs practical politics capable of reproducing future nostalgia. Proponents of European integration once excelled at creating expectations and turning some of their most ambitious plans into reality. Europeans gained a sense of direction from successive waves of enlargement, the removal of borders and the introduction of a common currency. The future exerted a pull on the present.

Today, the direction seems reversed. Politicians manage one emergency after another, while the future increasingly appears to be something threatening. Some of these threats are existential, like war creeping ever closer and the climate disruption that landed so forcefully on Europeans’ doorsteps this summer (and the summers before that). Some are less immediately perceptible, such as Europe’s technological decline and economic “slow agony”. Some, like demographic ageing, are more generational. Others, such as “civilisational replacement”, are based in conspiracy theories but nonetheless provoke anxiety among parts of Europe’s population.

Telling people to “dream big” cannot overcome such a range of fears for the future. Pro-European leaders instead need to govern the present in ways that make a better future imaginable. Future nostalgia therefore describes a capacity that European politics has lost—and might recover—rather than a mirror image of the backward-looking politics it seeks to counter.

Again, the way national leaders respond to Europe’s politicisation will be important. As Europe has become more domesticated, issues like migration that citizens experience as national and personal are increasingly becoming debates about “Europe” itself. So far this has often worked to pro-Europeans’ disadvantage because Europe becomes implicated in people’s grievances; the EU becomes associated with the costs and constraints of policies that touch their everyday lives.

Leaders instead need to make European action today part of a practical account of how they intend to improve people’s lives tomorrow. Many of them have to date struggled to tell this side of the story, leaving Europe’s critics freer to define integration primarily through its costs, constraints and risks. This also gives Eurosceptics space to sell the illusion that the future would be so much easier with less integration.

To reach beyond the most committed Europe-believers, pro-Europeans cannot simply say: “Vote for me because I believe in Europe.” Nor can they tell people to “accept this painful policy because Europe requires it.” Their arguments need to be more concrete: “Here is the problem you care about today. Here is what we can do nationally. Here is what we cannot do nationally and where we need other Europeans. And here is what that combination could make possible five years from now.” If getting there requires changing the way the EU works today, so be it. But those reforms should not become another abstract European project that looks like a distraction; leaders really need to show what policies would bring the desired future within reach.

That would amount to a rather different kind of European politics. It would cast “Europe” as neither an identity proposition nor a distant dream. Europe would instead become part of the causal chain connecting the problems people feel now to tomorrow’s improvements. Pro-European leaders’ task is thus to show people where Europe’s unfinished song is going rather than keep on promising a future masterpiece. It is also to show the public, measure by measure, that Europe is truly capable of keeping the record turning. 

Methodology

This paper draws on 5,834 AI-moderated interviews (AIMIs) conducted by Mandate Research on Glaut—a market research platform focused on AI-moderated voice interviews. The interviews were conducted between April 30th and May 15th 2026 across six European countries: France (815 interviews; May 5th-15th), Germany (1,253; April 30th-May 13th), Italy (1,039; April 30th-May 14th), the Netherlands (556; April 30th-May 15th), Poland (989; April 30th-May 15th), and the United Kingdom (1,182; April 30th-May 7th).

Participants were recruited from an online panel provider using quota sampling. After an initial pre-survey, respondents were asked whether they consented to take part in the AIMIs; 5,834 of the original 9,757 respondents (60%) consented to participate and subsequently completed the interview. These final interviewees were weighted according to their demographic and political characteristics to ensure the final sample aligned with the profile of each country’s adult population.

Each interview followed a structured discussion guide. Because the UK was the only non-EU state included in the research, the discussion guide here differed somewhat from the one used in other countries. Interviewees chose between conducting the conversation by providing audio responses (21%) or through a written chat (79%). On average, the interview took just under 18 minutes to complete. Responses were subsequently transcribed, machine translated into English and thematically coded with AI assistance.

The taxonomy of the four segments (the positive, the negative, the uncertain and the disconnected) was designed by the author based on the analysis of the data and interviews. Each interview was allocated to one of the four segments using AI-assisted coding to help manage the large volume of interviews. The research team provided a large language model (LLM) with detailed definitions of these four groups (see below). Acting as a digital research assistant, the model read through each interview, evaluated the respondent’s view of Europe’s future, and—based on the guidelines—assigned the most fitting label to each conversation.

For the purposes of the coding, the following definitions of the four groups were used:

• The positive: “Those who feel European, and even if they are concerned about Europe, they still retain hopes about the continent’s capacity to surmount the current challenges. Some of them might feel proud of how it’s already dealing with those, but this is not a must to qualify for this group. The key criteria are feeling European and seeing the light, even if it’s only at the end of a long tunnel.”
• The negative: “Those who are the most critical about Europe, the EU, its leadership and where the things are going. They might still be concerned—but for them Europe’s problems might largely be proof that European integration was a bad idea in the first place.”
• The uncertain: “Those who feel European but have much less confidence about where things are going. They might display some ambivalence, for example: great hopes, little confidence; or strong attachment to Europe but major disenchantment with leaders.”
• The disconnected: “Those who do not necessarily feel European that much and therefore, whatever the state of Europe or its imagined future, it does not concern them that much. They might often lack an opinion or their opinions might be very brief, basic and superficial. They seem as though they do not really care about Europe and its future.”

Similarly, the AI helped to assess the scale of the “imagination gap” by allocating respondents to groups based on the following definitions:

• Hopeful but doubtful: “Expresses a clear desire, hope or preference for a positive future (unity, peace, prosperity, geopolitical strength, democracy, environment, and so on) for Europe, but simultaneously expresses scepticism, pessimism or significant doubt that this future will actually materialise. They want the European project to succeed but feel constrained by current political, economic or social realities.”
• Hopeful and confident: “Expresses both a desire for a positive European future (unity, peace, prosperity, geopolitical strength, democracy, environment, and so on) and genuine belief or confidence that this future will come to pass. Their positive hopes align directly with their positive expectations for the future.”
• Rejecting Europe: “Expresses a hope or desire for less Europe/EU involvement in the future or the dissolution of the EU. This includes individuals who are actively opposed to the European project and believe it is fundamentally flawed.”
• Uninvested: “The participant is disengaged on the question of Europe and their future expectations or the participant does not discuss their personal hopes, dreams regarding Europe or the EU”

For this paper, AIMIs were complemented by qualitative research on public and political debates in 15 European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. This comparative desk research examined how Europe is discussed and framed across different national political and media environments. It was carried out—in June 2026, using a standardised questionnaire—by ECFR’s staff and through ECFR’s network of associate researchers.

About the composer

Pawel Zerka is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. As lead analyst on public opinion, he spearheads the organisation’s polling and data research on foreign affairs.

Credits

The author would like to thank the European Cultural Foundation (ECF)—especially André Wilkens, Isabelle Schwarz and Tsveta Andreeva—for their unfailing interest and support in exploring the nexus between culture and foreign policy, and for their confidence in developing the European Sentiment Compass as a joint ECFR-ECF partnership and initiative: already in its fifth consecutive year!

The use of AI-moderated interviews for this study would not have been possible without the close assistance of and prior inspiration from our colleagues at Mandate Research who were responsible for the technical and operational part of this endeavour. In particular, Alex Hymer has been a tireless partner in conducting the analysis.

This project is also based on qualitative research conducted by ECFR’s associate researchers, whose hard work needs to be recognised. They included: Hüseyin Silman (Cyprus), Christine Nissen (Denmark), Stephan Naumann (Germany), Harry Higgins (Ireland), Alberto Rizzi (Italy), Justinas Mickus (Lithuania), Niels van Willigen (Netherlands), Lívia Franco (Portugal), Oana Popescu-Zamfir (Romania), Matej Navrátil (Slovakia), and Ludvig Broomé (Sweden). Our colleagues at ECFR offices in Madrid and Sofia—Carla Hobbs, Irene Olombrada, Maria Simeonova and Alexander Velichkov—provided research on Spain and Bulgaria. (The author covered France and Poland, the two countries he knows best.)

A project of this scale is inevitably the result of teamwork. It would be hard to overstate the contribution of Kim Butson, who demonstrated incredible patience, meticulousness and ingenuity as editor. Jeremy Cliffe and Adam Harrison provided sage advice. Special thanks go to Chris Eichberger for graphic design, Nastassia Zenovich for data visualisations, Martin Tenev for his brilliant web design, Andreas Bock for managing the communication side of the project, as well as Angela Mehrer and Karel Solar for leading on the advocacy side. And the author would not get very far without the trust of Susi Dennison and Anna Kuchenbecker, who have supported this project since its inception in 2021.

We are also grateful to MEP Michal Wawrykiewicz for offering the opportunity to discuss this paper in the European Parliament on its launch day; and to MEP Hannah Neumann for accepting our invitation to speak at that event.

Finally, big thanks to Dua Lipa for offering such a well-fitting framing. We will be happy to explore further collaboration.

This year’s project has also been supported (in part) by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

Any mistakes or omissions are the fault of the author alone.

Bonus track

The charts below provide more evidence on the media habits of the four groups; the shares of the groups within the electorates of each of the six countries’ main political parties; and on people’s hopes for Europe in 20 years in the countries covered.

Source

Problem

Saxony-Anhalt has returned 43.8% of the vote for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in its state election. The result puts the party within reach of forming what would be the first state government run by the far-right in the history of the German federal republic.

The AfD has no executive experience and its Saxony-Anhalt branch is riven with tensions and splits. A chaotic state government could deter voters elsewhere from backing such parties. But if the AfD manages to govern halfway coherently, it will have the chance to pick fights with authorities in both Berlin and Brussels, and significant leeway to try out policies that could later be applied elsewhere. This might then embolden the radical right elsewhere in Europe.

Meanwhile the result increases the pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centrist federal coalition. Already before the Saxony-Anhalt election, splits were widening between eastern and western branches of his Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), and between him and his conservative party base. The result exacerbates these and, in turn, increases the chance that Merz will be too distracted and constrained by domestic politics to provide European leadership.

With France, Italy, Poland and Spain all entering election seasons, a Germany riven by internal drama cannot be the anchor that Europe needs.

Solution

Bold action is needed both in Berlin and beyond Germany. Talk of a party ban is too late and would anyway be unlikely to quell the underlying discontent felt by AfD voters. Action by the federal authorities against stand-out extremists in the party, and its funding streams, is both more realistic and more likely to keep its voters open to persuasion.

Meanwhile the CDU/CSU needs to make a strategic decision about what sort of party it wants to be; including where it will and will not cooperate with parties outside the traditional mainstream. Germany’s other pro-European parties also need to marshal a better answer to the radical right: substantive policies proving that they are on the side of ordinary people rather than powerful interests (Piotr Buras, Jeremy Cliffe and Susi Dennison have made concrete suggestions along these lines where climate policy is concerned.)

Other European capitals should curb their expectations of German leadership and nurture broader sources of impetus, including the new E6 group of major EU economies and the “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine. Merz, for example, is now even less likely to achieve a breakthrough on the EU’s 2028-2034 budget negotiations or on EU accession talks. Other European leaders, including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, will need to depend less on him to advance ambitious proposals. European diplomats in Berlin should think hard about how to sell their ideas into a more distracted and inward-looking government.

Context

Saxony-Anhalt is a small and demographically unrepresentative German state, with an atypically old and homogeneous population of 2.1m out of a national total of 83.5m. Nevertheless, its election result has reverberated through European capitals.

The vote on September 6th gives the AfD 39 seats, three short of a majority, requiring the party to seek support either from the left-conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) or the right flank of the CDU in order to govern. The only alternative would be a government supported (at least passively) by all five of the other parties, including the socialist Left party, cooperation with which is anathema to the CDU. The development comes as Merz’s fragile “grand coalition” is struggling to pass reforms aimed at reviving Germany’s stagnant economy.

Two upcoming state elections on September 20th—in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Berlin—could further dent his authority. It is possible, though not currently probable, that he will be forced out as chancellor in the coming months. The obvious frontrunner to replace Merz is Hendrik Wüst, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, but his moderate politics may not fit the polarised mood.

Source

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Jana Puglierin, senior policy fellow and head of ECFR’s Berlin office, in a World in 30 Minutes Emergency Room episode to discuss the latest in German politics.

The AfD’s win in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt was widely expected, but the scale of the result and the collapse of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) have still shocked Berlin. For the first time since the second world war, a far-right party is within reach of governing a German Bundesland. Jana unpacks the AfD’s possible paths to power, the pressure on Merz and his grand coalition, and what the result says about the far right’s continued rise in Europe.

Why does an election in a state of two million people matter so much for a country of 84 million? Can the AfD govern without a formal coalition partner, and would CDU lawmakers break the historic “firewall” to make that possible? Why is the party still treated as beyond the pale, even as it leads national polls? And should Europe prepare for a Germany too absorbed in its own crisis to lead?

This episode was recorded on September 7th 2026.

Source

💾

With the British government set to announce new measures targeting Israel’s settlement project, polling by Opinium for ECFR shows that just 18% of UK adults oppose a ban on trade in goods with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, compared to 46% who back it. Support rises to nearly three quarters—72% versus 28%—when excluding those who did not voice an opinion.

To date, the UK has sanctioned some two dozen organisations and individuals linked to settler violence. It has also excluded settlement goods from the preferential trade tariffs applied to Israeli products, though stopped short of an outright ban. However, settlement expansion is a state-driven project sustained by domestic economic incentives and foreign financial linkages. Rather than focusing only on its most violent manifestation, a settlement trade ban would challenge these underlying drivers.

Last week, foreign secretary Ed Miliband pledged to go further in challenging Israeli actions that are destroying the possibility of a two-state solution, like the recent construction of the “doomsday” E-1 settlement on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. The settlement ban expected to be announced later today also gives practical meaning to the UK’s recognition of Palestine last year—as demanded by Palestinians themselves. Such action by the British government commands broad support across Britain’s political and regional divides, while opposition is limited.

Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters decisively favour the proposed ban. It is also strongly supported by voters who have moved away from Labour, many of whom defected to the Green Party amid dissatisfaction with prime minister Keir Starmer’s response to Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. But backing for the measure extends across party lines: Conservative and Reform voters are also more likely to support than oppose it.

The findings cross the Brexit divide too, with supporters clearly outnumbering opponents among both Remain and Leave voters. The same pattern is evident geographically. Support is highest in London and Scotland, closely followed by Northern Ireland, while supporters also outnumber opponents in every English region and in Wales. Indeed, across every political, regional, age and gender group reported in the survey, support exceeds opposition.

The polling also finds that only 16% of British adults consider it antisemitic to target Israeli settlements. Meanwhile, a two-state solution remains by far the most popular outcome for Israel and Palestine with 40% favouring a Palestinian state alongside Israel, compared with 12% who favour a single shared state and just 8% who prefer the status quo of Israel without a Palestinian state.

ECFR’s polling shows a clear public mandate for the UK to take a leadership role in strengthening international efforts against Israel’s settlement project

ECFR’s polling shows a clear public mandate for the UK to take a leadership role in strengthening international efforts against Israel’s settlement project and to defend the viability of a two-state solution. This would build on similar moves by Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain in recent months.

The results also suggest the UK government has the public support to go further: extend the ban to investment and financial services, exclude settlements from all UK agreements with Israel (including the convention for the avoidance of double taxation) and prohibit all British business dealings with settlements (including the purchase of settlement real estate). This should go hand-in-hand with additional sanctions targeting organisations that play an instrumental role in funding and sustaining Israel’s settlement project, such as Ateret Cohanim, the Jewish National Fund’s Himnuta real-estate subsidiary, and the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization.

At the heart of the new UK government’s policy reset should be a collective push with its Western partners to finally implement the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation. The court underscored the duty of states to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. To uphold this approach would also help give effect to the 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which calls on states to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between Israel and the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967.

A settlement trade ban should mark the beginning of a more consequential British policy towards Israeli settlements. The polling shows that British public opinion is supportive. Having recognised Palestine in principle, the UK must now use its economic weight and diplomatic leadership to preserve it in practice.

Source

Three features of today’s unordered world are converging to create a devastating food crisis. Russia’s war in Ukraine is disrupting agricultural exports from both countries. The enduring blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is restricting fertiliser shipments. And this year’s El Niño (a sporadic warming of the Pacific Ocean generating widespread knock-on effects elsewhere) could be the most drastic on record, causing widespread droughts. As this year’s United Nations general assembly (UNGA) draws near, global food affordability and availability are at risk, and with them millions of lives and global security.

This looming catastrophe coincides with an absence of political leadership, including in multilateral institutions. As recently as 2022 a coalition of leaders convened by the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, managed to curb a food crisis. Today even that convening power is missing, with potentially more dire consequences. Political leaders face a test: amid war, climate crisis and diplomatic turmoil, is it still possible for groups of states and institutions to confront the direst humanitarian urgencies?

This note argues that a solution could still be found, requiring a comprehensive global effort on several fronts: drought, support for farmers, the Black Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and access to fertiliser. In all of this, Europe should lead.

The emerging calamity

Global food prices are already almost 75% higher than their 1999 lows. Almost 2.2 billion people face food insecurity. The coming trio of threats to food supplies will make that worse.

A “super El Niño” will likely bring heat and drought to southern Africa and significantly reduce food production in south and south-east Asia. It may reduce already falling rates of wheat production—which is expected to fall by 3% globally in 2026-27 (8% in the EU, 12% in Australia and 19% in Argentina)—and drive up rice prices.

Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. It is the largest single conduit for the nitrogen fertilisers most directly linked to yield and is the export route of about half the global supply of sulphur, a vital component of phosphate fertilisers. Thus, about one third of global seaborne fertilisers cannot reach fields, especially afflicting smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (where fertiliser prices are highest) and south Asia.

All this may well generate wider ripple effects lasting years. Rising prices and exhausted government subsidies in states like Malawi are deterring fertiliser use, which could depress future production. Historically, El Niño events are associated with protectionism (India has imposed export restrictions hitting countries in south-east Asia), which in turn raises prices, lowers margins and curbs investment in future output.

There are two bright spots among the big global agricultural producers: Ukraine and Russia, which together generate 30% of the world’s wheat exports, 20% of its corn, 60% of its sunflower oil and, from Russia alone, 20% of its fertiliser. But there too war has brought disruption. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s highly exposed grain and port infrastructure cut the latter’s exports by 75%, and more damage has already been done in August. Ukraine has been striking Russian port facilities and ships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, taking over 90% of Russia’s grain export capacity offline.

In 2022, a UN- and Turkey-facilitated arrangement mitigated a similar crisis and kept Russian and Ukrainian grain and fertiliser supplies flowing through alternative routes. US and EU agricultural aid in sub-Saharan Africa also helped. In 2026, by contrast, multiple challenges stand in the way of a similar solution. Logistically, war damage to infrastructure and low water levels in the Danube make it harder to get grain out of the region. Diplomatically, the UN is approaching a leadership transition, the US has turned against the organisation, and there is no global focal point for action.

Preventing the worst

European leaders, including those of the UK and Ukraine if it wants, should move fast to convene a coalition of states influential among the combatants in the Iran and Ukraine conflicts (India, China and Turkey especially) and of states especially exposed to this nutritional crisis (states in sub-Saharan Africa and south and south-east Asia). This coalition could draw on arrangements from the 2022 deal, as well as new links between UN agencies and initiatives like the CGIAR agricultural innovation network. It should seek to transcend political and diplomatic tensions, bringing leaders or at least ministers together on the margins of UNGA in the week of September 21st.

The joint initiative should have the following core elements:

• A programme to distribute food relief and technical assistance on drought-resistant agriculture and soil fertility, headed by an adviser to the UN secretary-general and supported by UN agencies. Such assistance works: one led by the CGIAR reached almost 6m African farmers in 2023-5 and, to cite just one example, in Malawi delivered maize yields 64% higher than the national average.
• This will need to be funded. The World Food Programme’s conservative pre-El Niño budget needs for 2026 should be covered (only 34% met so far). But the initiative should also marshal resources for the medium-term response to the “super El Niño” and its geopolitical intensifiers. This would include a financial mechanism to subsidise efforts by states to mitigate higher input costs and shift agriculture to drought-resistant strains. A CGIAR-led sustainable productivity growth push should have a budget of $500m over three years, with the first portion delivered fast enough to support the upcoming planting season.
• Coalition members should strive for a partial ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, to include an end to attacks both on ships carrying grain and on ports and infrastructure identified as central to grain, fertilisers and inputs. Its European participants especially could undergird this with support for Ukraine’s farms, including mobile storage units, fertilisers, seed and repairs to infrastructure. Some of this work is already underway.
• The programme should also involve an agreement with Iran that fertiliser shipments be allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Several attempts have been made in this direction already, with no results to date. Two elements should be added to make it more attractive. First, Iran’s own fertiliser and urea exports, and fertiliser shipments from other states, should be exempted from the US blockade and Iran’s imports of wheat and rice should be secured. Second, an expert-level group—akin to that used in the 2022 Black Sea arrangement—would oversee implementation and resolve disputes quickly and locally. Part-time negotiators must also secure practical arrangements to ensure results, not just agree on principles.

Unpalatable—but necessary

This effort would still face a series of obstacles. It would require multiple states to cross their red lines—or at least revisit established policies. There is a good chance that the two wars driving up food prices, in Ukraine and Iran, will escalate in the near future. Russia especially would likely be reluctant. The states most affected are a disparate and often antagonistic group. There is no single capital or organisation capable of appealing to all the decision-makers needed for a comprehensive solution.

But within this adversity dwells a constructive role for European governments. Along with the UN secretary-general, and a core group of middle powers including Brazil, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Turkey, they can bring together the states most exposed to the crisis as the core of this new group. Along with partners from across the UN system, such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, they can amplify those countries’ voices and help marshal the resources needed to make the programme outlined above meaningful.

Besides winning over the most affected states, the next step would be to bring on board those states with influence on combatants in the Ukraine and Iran conflicts. This means especially China and India. The UN secretary-general can play a particularly vital role there. Europeans can also help by appealing to Chinese and Indian claims to speak for developing countries in general. In turn, Brazil, India and South Africa can invoke Russia’s claims to share that mantle, as fellow members of the BRICS formation.

Europeans can also play a crucial role in recruiting Ukraine into the programme—even if the latter’s commitment to any ceasefire would depend on Russia’s position. They could see this anti-hunger coalition also as a way to help rally support for Ukraine in the global south, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, did in 2022 with his Grain from Ukraine initiative.

In the Strait of Hormuz, meanwhile, the coalition could present free passage for fertiliser exports as a means of trying out the Omani-Iranian technical plans for opening sea routes. It would present this as a win-win proposition: Iran would get some of its exports to global markets; the US would be supporting its Gulf allies; and both parties and their European interlocutors might see the long-term geopolitical benefits of a stabilising anti-hunger act along these lines (for example, curbing mass migration).

This initiative is intended to be a “no regrets” effort. Even if it takes time for the combatants to join—and it will—supporting farmers and global trade will improve the food situation. Progress in addressing hunger should provide an opportunity to highlight the further contribution that progress in the Black Sea and the Strait of Hormuz could bring. This sense of momentum may bring some or all combatants closer to agreement.

It will take leadership from both the most affected states and from wealthier countries to achieve this defiantly cooperative act in a world of unorder. But its very defiance, its assertion that common action is still possible, makes it all the more valuable.

Source

Europe is rearming. Defence budgets are rising, factories are expanding, and new EU instruments are pouring money into ammunition production and joint procurement. But money is only part of Europe’s defence problems. The main constraint is that its systems remain slow, fragmented and poorly suited to an age when military technology can change in months rather than decades.

Three transformations are hitting the continent at once. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought back large-scale war to European soil. Washington’s growing focus on the Indo-Pacific, its renewed interest in Greenland and its push to move NATO from “burden sharing” towards what might be called “burden shifting” mean that Europe will have to provide not only more money for the alliance but also a larger share of its combat power. At the same time, technology is changing warfare faster than traditional procurement systems can keep up.

At present, procurement systems work as follows: a military identifies a requirement; officials draw up specifications; companies compete for a contract and, years later, a system enters service. The problem is that, by then, the technologies shaping the battlefield may have changed dramatically. Promising technologies can become obsolete or fall by the wayside before they ever reach soldiers.

Ukraine has demonstrated a different model. Operational problems generate ideas; engineers turn them into prototypes; soldiers test them; manufacturers improve and scale them; battlefield experience feeds into the next iteration. Technology can also work in the other direction: new capabilities, such as cheap drones, can create tactics that planners had not previously considered.

The real measure of defence-industrial success should not be how many platforms roll off the line, but how fast capability can be imagined, built, tested, industrialised, fielded and adapted again

Europe needs to make this cycle permanent. I propose a model called Adaptive Defence Industrial Ecosystem Management, or ADIEM. The principle is for governments to move from being regulators and buyers to orchestrators of a defence ecosystem that links governments, armed forces, defence and tech companies, start-ups, universities and investors in a continuous loop. The real measure of defence-industrial success should not be how many platforms roll off the line, but how fast capability can be imagined, built, tested, industrialised, fielded and adapted again.

Industrial resilience and human capital are central to this model. Ukraine has shown that sustained operations depend on raw materials, reliable energy, resilient logistics and skilled labour quite as much as on the platforms themselves. And because digital capability now depends as much on software and data engineering as on heavy manufacturing, Europe’s defence sector competes directly with the commercial tech industry for the same scarce talent. This makes the appeal of a defence career a strategic question.

How to make ADIEM work

Reform defence governance. Create permanent structures that bring together military planning, industrial policy, innovation and procurement around shared capability goals. Give them room to depart from standard rules where those rules are the obstacle.

Start with battlefield problems. Build capabilities around what armed forces need to achieve. It works in reverse too: a new system needs a concept of operations written for it before it is bought at scale. Treat these as living documents that evolve with experimentation and real-world lessons.

Make procurement faster and more flexible. Use a hybrid procurement method. While central procurement agencies buy major systems, individual units are allowed to meet certain urgent combat needs. Alongside that, break large procurements into smaller contracts with incremental delivery, allow continuous software updates, use open architecture and speed up certification.

Build a genuine innovation ecosystem. Give start-ups, universities and public labs clear routes to deployment. Reward experimentation and operational relevance over novelty for its own sake.

Achieve affordable mass. Create dedicated programmes for weapon systems that are effective enough, cheap enough to buy in large numbers and simple enough to replace quickly. These include drones, autonomous vehicles, loitering munitions, low-cost intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems and electronic warfare.

Invest in human capital. Build a long-term pipeline of software engineers, AI specialists, systems engineers and skilled production workers, and change how the sector is perceived—presenting it as a high-technology field, not just a traditional military one.

Institutionalise experimentation. Set up permanent centres where soldiers, engineers, researchers and industry jointly evaluate new operational concepts and technologies. Test continuously rather than only in the run-up to a procurement decision.

Develop digital defence infrastructure. Invest in a sovereign defence cloud, secure data architecture, digital twins and common digital standards.

Governments also need to reform the institutions through which capability is developed, not just the funding lines that feed them. And while Europe has much of what it needs­—sophisticated armed forces, world-class manufacturers, strong universities and a growing defence-tech sector—it still lacks a system capable of connecting them quickly enough. That is the purpose of ADIEM: to connect these actors in a continuously adapting ecosystem, with governments acting as orchestrators rather than simply regulators and buyers.

Source

What happens if your economy is suddenly in crisis, Brussels offers help with strings attached—and Turkey, China or Russia can move faster? What if your country delivers every reform the EU asks for, only for a member state to block the next step anyway? And after years of waiting, would voters still choose to join?

In this special bonus episode, The Neighbourhood goes live from Lisbon for an EU enlargement game. Jessica Hendrick brings together RE-ENGAGE experts representing six EU candidate countries and throws a series of fictional—but very plausible—political and economic shocks at them inspired by real headlines: Russia’s intensified attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, Ireland’s EU presidency push on enlargement, Iceland’s referendum, Germany’s regional elections and the upcoming 2026 Enlargement Package. Drawing on three years of surveys, interviews and crisis simulations, each expert has to answer for their country.

Playing for each country:

• Albania: Morten Bøås, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), representing RE-ENGAGE’s Albanian partners at the European University of Tirana
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: Damir Kapidžić, director of the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Sarajevo
• Georgia: Ketevan Bolkvadze, senior lecturer in the department of political science at Lund University, originally from Georgia
• Moldova: Mathilde T. E. Giske, research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), representing RE-ENGAGE’s Moldovan partners at Moldova State University
• Serbia: Luka Filipović, research associate at the Institute for Contemporary History in Serbia
• Ukraine: Roman Petrov, president of the Ukrainian European Studies Association

The result is part enlargement simulation, part policy conversation and part game night. The experts bargain over a fictional €100 million EU cheque, decide whether the EU can compete with faster offers from other powers, test how easily disinformation could exploit frustration with enlargement, and imagine what would happen if EU membership was finally put to a public vote. Along the way, Serbia proposes keeping its relationship with Brussels “casual”, Bosnia finds a creative use for €100 million, and Ukraine calls for Hungarian “Varangians” when backsliding strikes.

When a crisis hits, does speed matter more than values? Can “Europe never wanted you anyway” become a winning political message? And if a country finally joins the EU, what stops democracy from sliding backwards once the prize of membership is secured?

Further reading:
RE-ENGAGE research overview
RE-ENGAGE research on Albania
RE-ENGAGE research on Bosnia and Herzegovina
RE-ENGAGE research on Georgia
RE-ENGAGE research on Moldova
RE-ENGAGE research on Serbia
RE-ENGAGE research on Ukraine

This podcast was recorded live in Lisbon on September 3rd, 2026.

Source

💾