Future nostalgia: Europe’s unfinished song

 

“The study classed Europe’s voters in four categories. The Positives (19%) are staunch pro-Europeans who view current crises as a catalyst for a stronger, more integrated union. The Negatives (39%) believe Europe’s best days are behind it.

Almost half of people in France, Germany and Italy – and almost all who voted for radical-right parties such as Germany’s AfD, France’s RN, the Dutch PVV and Reform UK – were Negatives, with 83% speaking of Europe in terms of loss and decline.”

OVOODOCORVO

 

Future nostalgia: Europe’s unfinished song

ECFR’s new research reveals Europeans are suffering from an imagination gap. Many people want to see Europe strong and flourishing—but fewer can picture a credible route from today’s disruptions to that destination

 

Paweł Zerka @pawelzerka.bsky.social on Bluesky

Senior Policy Fellow

https://ecfr.eu/special/future-nostalgia-europes-unfinished-song/

 

·       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.