Pick up a telescope in any European capital. Climb to the top of the nearest hill, castle or tower and look out over the landscape. You will notice some people readying themselves for battle. You will see others celebrating the prospect of chaos and disruption. Some will be waving flags; lots of national ones, some European ones, perhaps even one or two American ones. And you will recognise plenty of groups looking decidedly uncertain about what to do next.
This paper goes to press in the immediate aftermath of the US administration openly contemplating the annexation of Greenland; a territory of Denmark, America’s NATO ally. It comes after a year that brusquely stirred Europeans from their post-cold war slumber. Confronted by myriad challenges—Russia’s aggression, China’s economic competition and Donald Trump’s bullying, to name but three—they must suddenly ask themselves the most rudimentary questions afresh. Are they secure? Who are their allies? Should they prepare for war? Could the EU collapse? Is Europe bound to decline—economically, politically, culturally?
ECFR’s latest public opinion poll, conducted in November 2025 in 13 European countries (full methodology here) confirms the dismal state of the European morale. Already before the brutish beginning of 2026, marked by the US raid on Caracas and its aggressive posturing on Greenland, the 16,393 Europeans polled were feeling pessimistic about the future of the world and that of their own countries. They were worried (even more so than six months ago) that there might be a major new European war and even that Russia might attack their country. They doubted 2026 could bring an end to the war in Ukraine. And they had limited confidence about the EU’s future global influence as well as the bloc’s potential to lead in the most advanced technologies—where China’s star is shining bright.
But all that is just the context, not the focus, of this paper. Readers can explore the above-cited results at ECFR’s freshly updated Data Collection website. This brief concentrates instead on the political conditions necessary to drive Europe out of its slump.
It starts by observing that, in at least two respects, European citizens have already demonstrated a sober assessment of their global situation. Most realise the US can no longer be considered a reliable ally. Most also accept the need for stronger defence. The problem is that those two elements of what one might call Europe’s “geopolitical awakening” are not just unevenly distributed across the continent but also constitute distinct, only partly overlapping groups of citizens. Europeans are divided, both inside and between countries, and this requires leaders to think hard about possible coalitions and the stories they must tell to forge them.
Borrowing a metaphor from Jérôme Fourquet, a French pollster and political analyst who has written of the “archipelago” of views in his own divided country, this paper argues that Europeans currently resemble an archipelago of different mindsets. Only a minority fully share the views that are needed to build a stronger Europe: recognition that the US can no longer be fully trusted, support for more capable and independent European defence, and a positive demeanour towards the role of the EU. Most Europeans differ from that assessment in one or more of its three dimensions.
This paper identifies six “islands” of European public opinion on those topics and uses those to propose majority coalitions for the action needed. It suggests narratives could help link those islands together. And it concludes that the only alternative to this coalition-building would be to let the internal and external enemies of Europe dominate the map—with terrible consequences.
Climb that European tower. Look through that telescope. Survey that landscape. As clouds darken and fires spread, the enormity of the task ahead demands robust public backing for pro-European leaders’ actions. Those leaders need to be able to bring together fragmented and disparate groups of voters. That, in turn, demands invigorating stories capable of building bridges across the archipelago.
About the Author:
Pawel Zerka is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr Célia Belin is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and head of its Paris office since January 2023.