The Europe Citizens Want — But Cannot Yet See Coming

Europeans want a more united, secure and stronger Europe.

As the State of the Union approaches, can Europe’s leaders show them who is building it?

A new European study contains both encouraging and uncomfortable news for Europe's political leaders.

As reported by The Guardian, Europeans surveyed across six countries can describe a Europe they would like to see: stronger, more united, secure and capable of determining its own future. Yet many look at Europe today and see deterioration, slowness and uncertainty.[1][2]

That contradiction matters. Europe's problem may not simply be declining belief in the European project. Many Europeans still expect quite a lot from Europe. What they increasingly doubt is whether Europe's political system can produce it.

With the European Parliament preparing for the State of the Union, that raises a harder question:

Where is the European power capable of protecting the Europe citizens want?

Europeans Have Not Given Up on Europe

The European Sentiment Compass 2026, produced by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation, draws on 5,834 interviews in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom, complemented by analysis of political and media debate across 15 EU countries.[2]

Its findings initially seem contradictory. On average, 68% of respondents describe today's Europe through deterioration or a loss of normality. Only 12% primarily see awakening or renewal. Yet roughly three-quarters can describe a positive Europe they would like to inhabit twenty years from now, commonly involving greater unity, security and prosperity.[2]

This is not straightforward Euroscepticism. Dissatisfaction with Europe as it currently functions can coexist with considerable ambition for what Europe should become.

Earlier, the WE ARE EUROPE series on this blog approached the question through generally felt European values:
Personal freedom, democratic participation, equality before law, protection against arbitrary power, solidarity, tolerance of difference and peaceful resolution of disagreements.[3]

The new research raises the next question:

Do Europeans believe Political Europe can actually protect the conditions under which those values can survive?

Where Is the European Counterweight?

ECFR identifies recurring doubts about whether Europe can act, protect its citizens and live according to its own values. Respondents complain about slowness and fragmentation. The study also finds remarkably little recognition of political leadership beyond respondents' own countries.[2]

This study does not ask whether Europeans want a counterweight to Trump, Putin or Xi. That is an inference we make explicitly as our own.

But consider the environment in which these attitudes are developing.
Europeans see Donald Trump exercising American power, Vladimir Putin mobilizing Russian power and Xi Jinping pursuing Chinese economic, technological and geopolitical objectives.

What is much harder to see is the   E u r o p e a n  C o u n t e r w e i g h t

Europe possesses enormous economic resources, advanced societies, substantial military capabilities and nearly 450 million EU citizens. Yet these assets do not consistently translate into a political actor that Europeans—or others—recognize as capable of establishing objectives and mobilizing power behind them.

This does not mean Europe needs its own Trump, Putin or Xi. Its challenge is precisely the opposite:

To demonstrate that democratic, pluralistic government can generate strategic power without sacrificing democratic restraints.

From Aspiration to Capability

ECFR calls the problem an “imagination gap”.
People can imagine the Europe they want but struggle to see a credible route from today's Europe towards it.[2]

Europe has no shortage of ambitions. Its institutions announce strategies, targets and programmes. National leaders repeatedly call for a stronger, more sovereign or more competitive Europe.

But citizens need to recognize the connection between what Europe promises, what Europe decides, what Europe does and what they experience.

That requires more than better communication. Many doubts identified by ECFR concern things people believe they can observe themselves: slow decisions, inconsistently applied principles and uncertainty about Europe's capacity to guarantee security.[2]

Europe therefore needs recognizable Counterweight Leadership: political direction citizens can understand, sufficient capacity behind it to make that direction credible, and political representatives prepared to explain it and accept responsibility for delivering it.

Europe does not necessarily need one leader.
It needs European leadership that people can recognize.

When Europe Does Not Deliver

This connects with what this blog has previously called the Threat from Within.[4]

That threat is not ordinary political disagreement. Europeans are entitled to oppose EU policies, reject further integration or demand powers back from Brussels.

The danger arises when persistent dissatisfaction begins to undermine Europe's democratic capacity to disagree, decide and act together: when concentrated power becomes attractive because democratic government appears incapable of acting, when European cooperation becomes synonymous with weakness, or when external powers successfully exploit existing divisions.

Insufficient European action does not automatically produce populism, extremism or foreign influence. But institutional underperformance creates political space for those offering simpler answers.

European democracy cannot answer that challenge merely by explaining why authoritarian power is dangerous.

It has to demonstrate that democratic power works.

A Task for Europe's Political Representatives

This gives Members of the European Parliament a concrete challenge.

MEPs cannot themselves create a unified European executive or determine every national government's foreign policy. But they can force European politics to organize around recognizable strategic choices.

They can ask the Commission and Europe's political families:

What must Europe be capable of doing independently?
Where must it be able to act when Washington chooses differently?
How will it deter Moscow?
Where must it compete with Beijing?
Which dependencies are unacceptable?
What should Europe itself be capable of doing by 2030?

And most importantly:
Who represents Counterweight Europe?

And they can ask whether Europe's many individual policies actually add up to those objectives.
That would help turn European politics from an accumulation of policy files into something citizens can recognize as politics about Europe's future.

The State of the Union 2026 - Test

That makes the forthcoming State of the Union particularly relevant.

When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addresses the European Parliament, she will inevitably present policies, programmes and priorities. But Europe's present circumstances require something above the program: Direction.

Can Europeans recognize in those policies the outline of the Europe they say they want? Can they see how today's decisions lead towards a Europe capable of protecting itself and defending its interests? And can they recognize who is taking responsibility for getting it there?

For MEPs responding to the speech, the test should therefore not merely be: What will the Commission do next?
It should also be:
Does this add up to the European counterweight citizens increasingly appear to be waiting for—and can Europe's leaders show them the route?

The encouraging finding in the ECFR research is that European aspiration has not disappeared. The warning is that too many Europeans cannot yet see it becoming reality.
Trump, Putin and Xi make power visible. Europe's challenge is not to imitate their political systems.

It is to make democratic European power equally recognizable.
The citizens in this study can already imagine the Europe they want.
What they cannot yet see clearly enough is who is organizing it.
The State of the Union would be a good place to start.

References

[1] Jon Henley, “Europeans want a united Europe but question whether it can get there, study finds,” The Guardian, 9 September 2026.

[2] Paweł Zerka, European Sentiment Compass 2026 — Future Nostalgia: Europe’s Unfinished Song, European Council on Foreign Relations / European Cultural Foundation, 9 September 2026.

[3] Europe Is Us, WE ARE EUROPE — Our European Values, August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-our-european-values.html

[4] Europe Is Us, WE ARE EUROPE — Keeping Europe European — Internal Threats, August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-keeping-europe-european_01764668262.html