Europeans Want a United Europe. Most Don't Think They'll Get One
A major new study from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) finds that 73% of Europeans surveyed want a united, integrated Europe — yet 68% believe the continent is currently deteriorating or has lost its sense of normality. The report, titled "Future Nostalgia: Europe's Unfinished Song" and authored by ECFR senior fellow Pawel Zerka, draws on 5,834 AI-moderated interviews conducted in May and June 2026 across Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, weighted to be nationally representative, supplemented by comparative desk research on political and media discourse in 15 EU member states (ECFR).
Zerka frames the central tension as an "imagination gap": Europeans can describe the kind of Europe they want but struggle to picture a realistic path from today's disruptions to that goal. That gap has opened at a moment when European integration — the process by which EU member states deepen their political and economic ties — is becoming more prominent and more contested in public debate across the continent.
Among those surveyed, the most widely cited challenges were war (43%), economic pressures (33%) and the need for greater international autonomy (29%) — meaning Europe's ability to act independently on the world stage without relying on others. Only 12% saw the present moment as one of European awakening and renewal. A striking 74% said Europe was not dealing well with the challenges it faces, and 56% believed Europe's future was in danger (The Guardian).
The study sorts European voters into four categories. The Positives (19%) are staunch pro-Europeans who view current crises as a catalyst for deeper integration. The Negatives (39%) believe Europe's best days are behind it. The Disconnected (12%) are largely indifferent. The largest swing bloc, the Uncertain (31%), want a stronger, more integrated and more independent Europe but cannot picture how to get there.
The Negatives dominate the radical-right electorate. Nearly half of respondents in France, Germany and Italy fell into this category, as did almost all voters for parties such as Germany's AfD, France's Rassemblement National, the Dutch PVV and Reform UK. Within the Negative cohort, 83% spoke of Europe in terms of loss and decline. The report concludes that how people feel about Europe may shape how they vote domestically and how much influence the far right exerts over the continent's direction.
The ECFR report argues that European integration has always depended on a future-facing promise — the principle of "ever closer union" asking people to believe in both what Europe is and what it might become. Unlike Americans who lose faith in their country's future and cannot realistically demand the dismantling of the United States, Europeans who lose confidence in the EU can plausibly ask for "less Europe" or even their country's exit. This structural difference gives European pessimism a sharper political edge.
The findings build on ECFR's 2025 polling, which found Europeans notably gloomy about the future of their countries and the world, with Americans and Turks sharing similar sentiments. A separate ECFR poll conducted in May 2026, "Home alone: Europeans are ready to defend themselves," recorded that only about one in ten Europeans now see the US as an ally, a finding consistent with declining transatlantic confidence across multiple surveys (The Guardian). Pew Research Center data, meanwhile, found that EU favourability has risen across Europe since the 2016 Brexit vote, with a median of 62% now viewing the organisation positively (Pew Research Center).
The report arrives roughly a week before European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen's annual State of the Union address. In her 2025 address, von der Leyen declared there was "no time or room for nostalgia... this must be Europe's independence moment" (ECFR). Zerka's prescription runs in a different direction from grand rhetoric. The study's evidence, he said, suggests the EU needs fewer grand promises and more proof of trajectory.
The broader context here is a European electorate that has not given up on the integration project but has lost confidence in its deliverability. The 73% who want more Europe, not less, and the 31% Uncertain bloc that desires deeper integration without a credible pathway, together constitute a constituency that pro-European forces have not yet learned to mobilise. The risk, as the report implicitly frames it, is not that Europeans reject the EU's ambition but that the gap between aspiration and perceived feasibility widens to the point where the Negatives' narrative of irreversible decline becomes self-fulfilling. For von der Leyen's upcoming address, the study's framing carries an uncomfortable implication: declarations of independence moments may resonate less than concrete, incremental proof that the union can navigate the war, economic strain and strategic autonomy demands that citizens identify as existential.
