- European politics is not simply divided between left and right, and between pro- and anti-European integration attitudes – but between different ‘crisis tribes’ whose members have been traumatised by key events.
- In the last decade, Europe has undergone crises of the economy, security, health, climate, and migration, which have created political identities that run through and between countries.
- Germany is the only country whose citizens select ‘immigration’ as the issue that has affected them above all else. In France and Denmark, people choose climate change as the most important crisis. Italians and Portuguese point to global economic turmoil. In Spain, Great Britain, and Romania, the covid-19 pandemic is the principal issue. Estonians, Poles, and Danes consider the war in Ukraine to be the most transformative of crises.
- In the upcoming European Parliament election, covid-19, the economy, and Ukraine are unlikely to be key mobilising issues. The climate and migration crises are dominating headlines and will be especially influential in how people vote.
About the Authors
Ivan Krastev chairs the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of ECFR, a member of Open Society Foundations’ global advisory board, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and the author of the widely acclaimed book “After Europe”. In 2020, he was awarded the Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing. Previously, he served as executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans and as editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy.
Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank. He is also the current Henry A Kissinger chair in foreign policy and international relations at the US Library of Congress, Washington DC. His topics of focus include geopolitics and geoeconomics, China, EU politics and institutions.