Shifting Ground: When Environmental Fallout Shakes Politics

Environmental fallout is becoming a tangible reality for a growing number of Europeans amidst unabated climate change. While much of this harm is hard to attribute to a single cause or set of policies, there are cases where a few actors bear clear responsibility for the damage. This dynamic is visible in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, where voters have expressed their frustration through the ballot box.

The ground in the Dutch province of Groningen shakes more often than one might expect. More than 1,600 kilometres from the nearest active volcano, and far from any major natural fault lines, the earthquakes that trouble this region are entirely man-made.

For decades, the Netherlands extracted vast quantities of natural gas from beneath Groningen’s soil, powering homes, fuelling industry, and filling state coffers, all while quietly destabilising the earth below. What began as an economic triumph has since left a complicated legacy: thousands of small earthquakes have damaged homes, unsettled communities, and eroded public trust. Today, residents live not only with cracks in their walls, but with fractures in their confidence in the institutions that once championed the project. From compensation claims and legal battles to the ballot box, this distrust is increasingly visible today.

Gas in Groningen

Up until 1959, the North Sea area was assumed to be mostly devoid of oil and natural gas. This changed when exploratory drilling by the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM), jointly owned by Shell and Esso, discovered a gas field in the municipality of Slochteren, in the province of Groningen. While little was known about its size at first, further drilling revealed a site large enough to be of commercial interest. After the Dutch government granted a concession in 1963, extraction began under a consortium of the state-owned mining company, NAM, Esso, and Shell.

The ensuing gas rush was further amplified by expectations that gas would lose its relevance over the following decades with the anticipated rise of nuclear energy. Consequently, there was a strong push to scale up production and sell Groningen’s gas quickly, and early concerns – particularly about possible ground subsidence – were brushed aside. Extraction ultimately peaked in 1976, at 88 billion cubic metres, roughly equivalent to Germany’s entire current annual gas consumption. Only after the oil crisis of the 1970s and growing social resistance to nuclear energy had shown that gas was here to stay did the government begin treating the Groningen field as more of a long-term reserve, slightly reducing extraction and diversifying towards smaller fields, particularly in the North Sea.

A Turning Point

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the Groningen field seemed nothing short of a miracle. Gas profits flowed generously into shareholders’ pockets as well as into the treasury. The Dutch government received up to 85 per cent of gas revenues, which at times accounted for as much as a fifth of total government spending. For a small country still rebuilding after World War II, this was transformative. Roads, schools, hospitals, and social programmes were funded in no small part by the resource extracted from beneath Groningen.

Yet the benefits to the province itself proved limited. The gas sector created around 9,200 jobs – meaningful but modest for a region with a labour force of approximately 286,000. As a Dutch parliamentary inquiry concluded in 2023, only about 1 per cent of the total revenues from the gas field flowed back to Groningen. Most of the economic value flowed upwards to The Hague, to be redistributed at the national level, far from the villages that hosted the extraction sites.

National policy choices only deepened this imbalance. Unlike Norway, which established a sovereign wealth fund on its oil revenues, the Netherlands folded gas income directly into the state budget. This allowed for the rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state, but at the cost of longer-term planning. The gas windfall also brought what The Economist would coin the “Dutch Disease” in 1977: as revenues strengthened the guilder, Dutch manufacturing lost its international competitiveness, and unemployment more than quadrupled between 1970 and 1977, rising from 1.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent. In short, the gas boom filled the treasury while hollowing out industry.

Things get shaky

For the first two decades of gas extraction, the ground beneath Groningen remained deceptively calm. Despite early concerns about subsidence, no seismic activity was officially recorded, reinforcing the belief that the risks were manageable. This confidence began to erode on Christmas Day in 1986, when a magnitude-2.8 earthquake struck near Assen. In 1991, the Dutch meteorological institute recorded the first officially recognised induced earthquake directly linked to the Groningen field, with a magnitude of 2.4. From there, seismic activity accelerated: four earthquakes in 1991, six in 1992, and 16 in 1993.

Induced earthquakes occur when human activity, most commonly hydrocarbon extraction, alters pressure levels in underground rock formations. As gas is removed, pressure drops, the surrounding rock compacts, and stress builds along geological faults until it finds sudden release. In Groningen, this process unfolded gradually but relentlessly.

By the early 2010s, the situation had escalated sharply. In 2013 alone, 133 earthquakes were confirmed across the Netherlands, 121 of them in Groningen, averaging roughly one every three days. The turning point came on 16 August 2012, with the Huizinge earthquake, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, the strongest ever recorded above the Groningen field.

Though most of these tremors were classified as light by seismological standards, their impact on buildings and residents was anything but negligible. Homes cracked, foundations shifted, and entire neighbourhoods began to deteriorate.

Still, the political response lagged despite the mounting evidence. In January 2013, the Minister of Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp, decided against an immediate reduction in gas extraction, against the urgent recommendation by the State Supervision of Mines, instead commissioning 14 separate investigations into the maximum credible earthquake magnitude, seismic hazard, effects on housing and infrastructure, security of supply, and the fiscal cost of a production cut. This decision came at a time when the Netherlands was in a period of fiscal austerity, and gas revenues were not easy to forgo.

The prevailing assumption was that the risks could be managed financially. A compensation scheme for earthquake damage was expanded, based on the belief that revenues could offset material losses and political fallout. Extraction would continue; damages would be paid.

It was not until 2014 that production was capped – at 42.5 billion cubic metres – for the first time explicitly due to the earthquakes. Further reductions followed, though always cautiously. Plans to phase out extraction entirely were announced, revised, and at one point delayed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which briefly revived Groningen’s strategic importance. Gas extraction from the field ultimately ceased in October 2023. By then, roughly 2.3 trillion cubic metres of gas had been extracted from one of the largest gas fields ever exploited.

But even with extraction halted, the harm persists. Over 3,300 buildings were demolished in Groningen due to earthquake damage between 2012 and 2023. Furthermore, following the Huizinge quake, hundreds of thousands of damage reports have been filed. The Dutch state has paid over 1.2 billion euros in compensation, yet many residents describe the process as slow, opaque, and adversarial. Studies by researchers at the University of Groningen also link sustained exposure to the risk of earthquakes to deteriorating mental and physical health outcomes, and even to increased mortality. Entire communities lived for years in a state of permanent vigilance, unsure whether their homes were safe or whether promised repairs would ever materialise.

Shaking Up the Vote

What makes Groningen particularly distinctive is not just the scale of the damage, but its origin. The harm that people there have faced for decades is immediate, local, and unmistakably man-made. And that has had significant political consequences.

Jordan McAllister and Afiq bin Oslan tackle this topic in a recent paper titled “Shaking up the Vote: The Electoral Impact of Induced Earthquakes”. Placing the Groningen earthquakes at the centre of a broader inquiry, the authors examine how first-hand experience of the direct consequences of environmental harm has translated into changed voting behaviour.

Groningen is an unusually well-suited setting for this kind of study. Unlike pollution or an oil spill, where the distribution of harm is ultimately shaped by human decisions, induced earthquakes strike in nearby areas depending on geological factors that no one controls. They are caused by human activity (unambiguously so in Groningen, where earthquakes were virtually non-existent before drilling began), but where exactly they strike is essentially random. As a result, the researchers can reasonably associate differences in voting behaviour across polling stations with earthquake exposure rather than some pre-existing political difference between areas.

Using data on 891 earthquakes linked to the Groningen field alongside highly granular polling-station-level data across Groningen and its two neighbouring provinces, Friesland and Drenthe, McAllister and bin Oslan ask whether voter exposure to induced earthquakes increases electoral support for GroenLinks, the Dutch green party. The answer, in short, is yes. Across three elections and multiple model specifications, areas with greater earthquake exposure consistently show higher GroenLinks vote shares in subsequent elections.

The paper also finds that earthquakes are associated with a significant fall in support for the PvdA, the Dutch Labour party, consistent with the idea that earthquake exposure is prompting vote-switching towards the Greens from other parties on the left, rather than simply raising overall turnout.

Crucially, the relationship between earthquake exposure and green voting is not linear. It peaks at moderate levels of exposure and weakens at the very highest levels of impact. The authors suggest that those most severely affected may come to prioritise immediate material concerns such as compensation, repairs, and economic security over electoral environmental preferences. At the same time, those experiencing meaningful but less overwhelming exposure are most likely to translate that experience into a green vote. Environmental shocks then do not automatically and uniformly push electorates in a greener direction. How exposed they are, and what else that exposure demands of them, matter as well.

Beyond Groningen

The Groningen case is, in several respects, unusual. Induced seismicity directly linked to gas extraction in a densely populated region, with clear institutional responsibility and a single identifiable operator, is not a combination that recurs frequently elsewhere. But the broader mechanism it illustrates – locally experienced and clearly attributable environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour – is hardly confined to the Netherlands.

In the Val d’Agri valley in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, the energy giant ENI’s oil extraction operations present a comparable picture. The region hosts the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe, yet its population has seen negligible economic benefit from decades of extraction while bearing environmental costs, including contaminated water sources and elevated rates of cancer and respiratory illness.

The political response has been real: ENI executives have faced joint legal action from the regional government, municipalities, and environmental agencies. Moreover, grassroots organisations such as COVA Contro have built sustained platforms for accountability. Anti-extraction sentiment has surfaced electorally too: in the 2019 regional election, a left-wing candidate running explicitly on an anti-oil platform received 4.3 per cent of the vote, though this has remained a niche position rather than a decisive force.

Two factors may help explain the gap between Italy and the Netherlands. Firstly, economic anxiety in the Val d’Agri valley, one of Italy’s poorest regions, tends to compete with environmental grievance as a political driver. Secondly, unlike the Netherlands, Italy has no well-established Green party capable of channelling anti-extraction sentiment into parliamentary weight. While the Groningen parallel seems to hold in terms of the underlying injury and political mobilisation, the similarities are less clear when it comes to votes.

The German lignite regions offer another striking parallel. In the Rhineland and Lausitz, local communities have borne the costs of extraction in ways that are, if anything, more visible than in Groningen: more than 50 villages or parts of villages have been demolished in North Rhine-Westphalia alone to make way for expanding open-cast mines, with entire communities uprooted and resettled. The public has opposed these projects fiercely: the planned demolition of the village of Lützerath to expand RWE’s Garzweiler II mine drew thousands of protesters over years of sustained resistance; in 2023 the eventual five-day police clearance of an activist occupation of the village became a national flashpoint. But was there also a wider political response?

The vote share data from North Rhine-Westphalia is at least suggestive: the Greens rose from 6.4 per cent to 18.2 per cent in state elections between 2017 and 2022, in contrast to their more modest gains at the federal level, from 8.9 per cent in 2017 to 14.8 per cent in the 2021 Bundestag election. That rise, though, predates the party’s own turn: In October 2022, when they were in government federally and in the state, the Greens agreed to the deal with RWE that cleared Lützerath for demolition. This turn was viewed by many as a change in sides.Whether this will cost them electorally is difficult to determine.

The confounders here are too numerous to read much into either shift directly, but the broader point stands: these cases offer at least plausible instances of locally experienced environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour, in different institutional and partisan contexts. What they also reveal, by contrast, is why Groningen is such a rare analytical opportunity. Elsewhere, the harm is real enough, but the causal pathway remains tangled, and the harm harder to isolate.

The Limits of Attribution

The cases considered so far share a key feature: the source of harm is local, visible, and traceable to a specific operator or set of decisions. Where the previous section showed variation – Groningen producing a measurable electoral response, Basilicata and the lignite regions less so – the explanation lay not in attribution, but in what came after it: whether a credible electoral channel existed to convert grievance into votes. The mobilisation, in all three cases, seems real enough. But not all environmental harms afford even that starting point.

When flooding devastates a region or drought destroys harvests, the causal chain is longer and more contested. Climate change may have made the event more severe, but the link between many natural disasters and specific policy choices is harder to draw, and therefore harder to convert into electoral accountability. The devastating floods that struck Valencia in October 2024, killing over 230 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Spain’s recent history, illustrate this well. Scientists broadly agreed that climate change had intensified the rainfall, but the political response was far from unified. Multiple levels of government faced – and traded – blame simultaneously: regional president Carlos Mazón faced mass protests over the dismantling of an emergency unit his administration had shut down just the year before, while the national government faced accusations of insufficient coordination. Rather than producing more support for environmental protection, the debate became highly polarised, with disinformation campaigns seeking to redirect blame onto environmentalists themselves for having allegedly restricted flood-control infrastructure.

Groningen and the cases it can usefully be set alongside illustrate that the political salience of environmental harm is shaped not only by its severity, but by its legibility, by how clearly it can be traced to identifiable decisions, and how directly it is felt. As the consequences of both energy policy and climate change continue to accumulate across Europe, that kind of clarity is likely to become rarer.

Què li pasa al fútbol mundial?

En la seva ambició de convertir el futbol en un esport veritablement global, la FIFA s’acosta cada vegada més als autòcrates i els avala obertament. Tanmateix, no són només els règims els que estan remodelant el futbol. El neoliberalisme també està transformant el joc i la relació entre els aficionats i els seus clubs. Hem parlat amb el politòleg i autodeclarat nostàlgic del futbol Cas Mudde.

Alessio Giussani: El 2025, poc abans que Trump comencés a bombardejar l’Iran, la FIFA li va concedir el seu premi de la pau. El president de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino, també va aparèixer a l’anomenada “junta de la pau” amb una gorra de Trump. Mentrestant, els aficionats normals són expulsats pels preus. Continua sent aquest el joc del poble?

Cas Mudde: El futbol mundial està cada vegada més capturat pels diners i per persones i règims dubtosos. La FIFA no és una excepció, sinó un cas extrem.

El Mundial de 2018 a Rússia va ser un torneig problemàtic, però no va generar gaire publicitat negativa. El 2022, a Qatar, era impossible ignorar la connexió entre futbol i política. Tot i això, el règim qatarià va acabar obtenint una imatge pública força positiva: la gent es va oblidar de les vulneracions dels drets humans i de la quantitat desmesurada de diners gastada en estadis que pràcticament no tindrien utilitat després del torneig, i es va quedar amb la idea que havia estat un gran Mundial. Això és el que ha passat, pràcticament, amb tots els règims, democràtics o no, que han organitzat una Copa del Món. Aquest any, sospito, serà la primera vegada que els països amfitrions rebran més publicitat negativa que positiva.

Això no importa gaire a un país tan gran i poderós com els Estats Units, i encara menys a Trump, la base electoral del qual ni tan sols té interès pel futbol. Deixarà de preocupar-se pel torneig tan bon punt deixi de ser-li útil. Però això sí que perjudicarà la manera com la gent percep el futbol mundial.

Almenys sobre el paper, aquest no és el “Mundial MAGA”. L’organitzen tres nacions —els EUA, el Canadà i Mèxic— que representen tres espais diferents de la política mundial: els defensors dels combustibles fòssils, el liberalisme ultracentrista i el socialisme del Sud global. Quin significat li atribueixes a això?

Mark Carney també és defensor dels combustibles fòssils. El que és interessant és que aquest Mundial es coneixia inicialment com «la candidatura unificada», però en qüestió de mesos es va convertir, de fet, en el Mundial MAGA: tot gira al voltant dels Estats Units i de Trump. Això representava un repte, però també una gran oportunitat per al Canadà i Mèxic. El Canadà hauria pogut demostrar que és el bon noi de l’Amèrica del Nord; Mèxic hauria pogut demostrar que és el veritable país del futbol. El llistó és tan baix que fer el que tothom sol fer ja et fa quedar bé.

“La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que aposta per totes les coses dolentes que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista.

En canvi, Canadà i Mèxic no han dit res sobre el premi de la pau, del tracte a l’equip iranià i Omar Artan, i sobre l’àrbitre somali a qui es va denegar el visat. L’únic que fan és facilitar les coses a Trump i intentar suavitzar la situació quan fa alguna cosa dolenta, per això crec que també afrontaran crítiques. En general, no tinc la sensació que cap dels països amfitrions estigui particularment entusiasmat amb aquest Mundial. Claudia Sheinbaum ha impulsat algunes iniciatives realment bones a Mèxic, com ara construir centenars de camps comunitaris, però no hi veig un impuls real.

L’edició del Mundial de 2022 va ser una de les edicions més globals fins a la data, amb Qatar com a amfitrió i el Marroc arribant a les semifinals. L’edició d’enguany s’ha ampliat per incloure 48 equips en lloc de 32. Hi ha algun mèrit decolonial en l’ambició d’Infantino de fer que el futbol mundial sigui veritablement global?

El projecte d’Infantino és aconseguir la seva reelecció. Com més associacions nacionals de futbol estiguin representades al Mundial, més satisfetes estaran amb el seu lideratge. Si realment volgués decolonitzar el futbol, podria haver canviat la representació proporcional entre continents. En canvi, només va ampliar el nombre de participants sense canviar els criteris subjacents. Això vol dir tenir encara més països d’Europa, perquè són rics, i això és el que volen els patrocinadors.

La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que beneficia tots els elements negatius que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista. Essencialment, la FIFA dona diners a les associacions nacionals de futbol perquè els gastin com considerin millor per al progrés del futbol als seus països. Per descomptat, molts règims simplement agafen aquests diners i se’ls embutxaquen, deixant el futbol sense desenvolupar. Però a la FIFA això no li importa gaire.

La política de la FIFA també està empitjorant. El 2018, no es va pronunciar contra les polítiques russes contràries als drets LGBTQIA+, però tampoc els va donar suport. A Qatar, es va prohibir als capitans dels equips portar braçalets amb els colors de l’arc de Sant Martí. Ara, la FIFA defensa activament Trump i fins i tot el celebra.

Només una fracció de les nacions que participen al Mundial són democràcies —i encara menys liberals—, i el mateix s’aplica al conjunt dels membres de la FIFA. Hi ha maneres de defensar els valors liberals sense el postureig civilitzacional?

Si vols ser coherent, hauries de deixar la política al marge tant com puguis, perquè si converteixes la FIFA i el Mundial en un projecte liberal-democràtic, aleshores et dirigeixes a una minoria d’estats, i mai no seràs veritablement global. Es podria argumentar que ser polític, encara que de vegades siguis hipòcrita o incoherent, és millor que mantenir-se al marge de la política. Però ja no estic segur que sigui així, perquè les campanyes d’inclusió de la FIFA s’han tornat tan buides, tan vagues i tan plenes de pinkwashing que l’únic missatge que arriba és que tot el que diuen sobre política és una collonada. [Nota de la traductora: “pinkwashing” es manté en anglès perquè és un terme d’ús habitual per descriure l’ús instrumental de causes LGTBIQ+ per millorar la imatge d’una institució.]

Al mateix temps, és clar, la política sempre hi és. Organitzar un Mundial és una gran oportunitat per a qualsevol règim, i la neutralitat no fa que l’esdeveniment deixi de ser polític. Però sí que tinc un problema amb fixar expectatives elevades i no estar mai a l’altura —que és precisament el que ha fet la FIFA amb la seva agenda de drets humans i els seus grans compromisos amb la sostenibilitat. No pot existir un Mundial sostenible, i sempre hi haurà participants que no respectin els drets humans. Aleshores, per què la FIFA no introdueix una agenda menys ambiciosa però que realment compleixi?

Vivim un moment de ressorgiment del nativisme i del nacionalisme, amb l’extrema dreta en ascens arreu del món. Alimenta un Mundial farcit de política aquestes dinàmiques, o el futbol pot canalitzar el nacionalisme cap a alguna cosa més afable, fins i tot unificadora?

El sociòleg britànic Michael Billig va encunyar el terme “nacionalisme banal” per descriure les representacions quotidianes d’una nació, que construeixen un sentit compartit d’identitat nacional. Es tracta, per exemple, de banderes nacionals penjades a l’exterior dels edificis públics. El nacionalisme esportiu entra dins d’aquesta categoria, i té elements negatius. Al meu país, els Països Baixos, una part del nostre sentiment antigermànic no provenia de la Segona Guerra Mundial, sinó del futbol. Al mateix temps, els equips de futbol en molts països són més multiculturals que les societats, i jugadors de diferents ètnies esdevenen herois i models per a molts —almenys mentre guanyen.

El que és peculiar del futbol és l’emoció i la intensitat que afegeix al nacionalisme banal, fent que el nacionalisme sigui una mica secundari. Guanyar vol dir guanyar un partit, no que la teva nació domini una altra. Per molt que em desagradin les banderes, crec que hi ha un pànic moral al voltant del nacionalisme i el hooliganisme en el futbol. Hi ha elements inclusius i exclusius: pot ser tant bo com dolent.

Imparteixes un curs sobre futbol i política. Com interpretes aquesta relació, i com veus que evoluciona?

Gran part de l’atenció se centra en l’alta política: institucions, governs, partits, etcètera. A mi m’interessa més la ‘baixa’ política de l’esport, la música, la cultura, etc. Faig servir el futbol per ensenyar política, perquè el futbol reflecteix la societat de moltes maneres. Curiosament, aquest és un dels cursos més radicals que he impartit. Llegim Judith Butler i la performativitat de gènere, i parlem molt d’identitat i globalització.

Pensa en la rellevància creixent dels “equips de la diàspora”, aquelles seleccions nacionals que estan més formades cada vegada més per jugadors nacionals “de sang” encara que no hagin nascut ni crescut al país que representen. Senegal n’és un exemple paradigmàtic, amb gairebé la meitat dels jugadors nascuts o criats fora del país —principalment a França, la seva antiga potència colonial. Els equips de la diàspora són, en certa manera, el contrari dels “equips cívics”, formats per jugadors de minories nascuts i criats en un país, com els alemanys d’origen turc. Això mostra que fins i tot els estats molt restrictius amb la immigració poden ser molt flexibles quan es tracta d’esportistes d’elit, i que les persones antiimmigració no tenen cap problema amb això.

La UE també ha tingut un paper important en la configuració del futbol modern. La sentència Bosman del Tribunal de Justícia de la Unió Europea, el 1995 va sacsejar el sistema europeu de traspassos futbolístics per alinear-lo amb les normes del mercat únic. I com que Europa és tan dominant en el futbol global, la sentència va canviar el sistema mundial.

Interpretes el futbol com a part de la societat civil. Quin és el raonament darrere d’aquesta associació?

Solia treballar sobre la societat civil a l’Europa postcomunista a finals dels anys noranta i principis dels 2000, hi havia una associació positiva entre una societat civil forta i una democràcia saludable. Però el discurs tenia un enfocament molt limitat en grups prooccidentals, grups feministes, etcètera. M’interessaven els anomenats grups de la societat “incivilitzada”, que no eren necessàriament prodemocràtics, però que unien molt a les persones i eren políticament actius. Els hooligans i els ultres sovint tenen dues cares: tenen mala reputació, particularment a Europa, però també són actius en bones causes, com ajudar persones pobres o comunitats locals després de terratrèmols o altres desastres naturals. M’agrada aquesta complexitat.

Com ha canviat el neoliberalisme el futbol?

Per donar resposta a aquesta pregunta sovint faig servir el club al que dono suport, el PSV Eindhoven. El PSV va ser fundat per treballadors de Philips. Era, en molts sentits, una representació de l’economia industrial, d’una forma de capitalisme arrelat. Philips tenia una connexió amb Eindhoven perquè tenia fàbriques a la ciutat, i senzillament no pots agafar fàbriques i traslladar-les a un altre lloc. Ara tens clubs, com el Manchester City, que són un reflex perfecte del neoliberalisme global. Un règim estranger decideix invertir en un club no perquè tingui una connexió amb una comunitat local, sinó perquè aquest club és una marca global i et dona accés a una audiència global. La connexió entre capitalisme i futbol sempre hi ha estat, però el capitalisme ha canviat, i el futbol està canviant amb ell.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

Sent nostàlgic, he de recordar que els vells temps no sempre van ser tan purs. Abans dels fons d’inversió, hi havia l’oligarca rus Roman Abramóvitx que va comprar el Chelsea. En contextos més petits, hi havia el venedor de cotxes de segona mà que dirigia el club local. L’escala era més petita i més local, però aquell tipus també era dubtós i feia servir el futbol per elevar la seva pròpia imatge.

El que em preocupa des del punt de vista de la societat civil és que, tot i que sempre hi va haver explotació i jerarquia, també hi havia una connexió amb la comunitat. Philips depenia d’Eindhoven. Els capitalistes d’avui no tenen aquesta connexió, i la comunitat local gairebé ja no té veu. Els grans clubs ja no depenen de la venda d’entrades com a part important dels seus ingressos. Ara els diners provenen dels drets de retransmissió i dels patrocinadors.

Els aficionats són a temps de salvar el joc en el qual s’ha convertit?

Els aficionats són una mica com els addictes: tenen el poder de destruir el sistema demà mateix si deixen d’alimentar la maquinària. Ningú no invertirà diners en el futbol si ningú no el mira. Però, si ho fan, també hi surten perdent. Per això tenen poques opcions per plantar cara. Poden resistir la mercantilització des de dins del sistema. A Alemanya, per exemple, van aconseguir frenar la implantació dels partits dels dilluns al vespre. O bé poden abandonar el sistema del tot i crear clubs alternatius propietat dels aficionats, però aquests clubs no poden competir al màxim nivell.

No soc particularment optimista perquè veig que el futbol modern es destrueix a si mateix de la mateixa manera que ho fa el capitalisme. S’expandeix a nivells insostenibles, com un esquema piramidal en què el valor es va aprimant cada cop més. Les firmes de capital privat i els règims estan injectant diners al sistema perquè esperen alguna cosa a canvi, ja sigui benefici o victòries diplomàtiques. Però poden retirar-se tan ràpidament com hi van entrar si s’adonen que ja no els queda res a guanyar. I quan la bombolla esclata, no tornem al punt on érem abans, perquè les lleialtats han desaparegut. La generació d’anglesos que ha quedat exclosa dels estadis de la Premier League pels preus no tornarà així com així.

Molts clubs de futbol es troben entre les institucions més antigues que existeixen. Han existit durant més d’un segle, i han donat sentit al fet de ser d’algun lloc. Quan una antiga ciutat minera perd un equip de futbol, és una pèrdua important per a la comunitat.

Malgrat tot, el futbol encara és capaç de crear comunitat i connexió. Hi ha res que els partits polítics o les organitzacions de la societat civil en puguin aprendre?

El tipus de relació que tens amb un club que segueixes és profundament irracional. No pots recrear aquesta relació artificialment.

Una cosa que se’n pot aprendre és la importància de l’arrelament. Si la gent continua donant suport a un club fins i tot quan perd o baixa de categoria, és perquè s’hi sent connectada. Molts clubs locals funcionen gràcies a voluntaris i persones que no en treuen diners. La professionalització creixent i la manca d’arrelament són cada vegada més febleses comuns dels moviments progressistes, i veig que una cosa semblant passarà en el futbol modern.

Si no et reconeixen com a part de la comunitat, la gent sent que has perdut el contacte. La majoria d’ONG avui dia no tenen voluntaris; tenen professionals. I per als professionals, la institució importa més que la causa. Si el que t’importa principalment és una causa, trobes maneres de fer la feina fins i tot quan s’acaben els diners. Però si el que t’importa principalment és la institució, passaràs a una altra cosa i trobaràs una altra feina. Les grans ONG s’han convertit en negocis amb llocs de treball molt ben pagats ocupats per persones que passen d’una organització a una altra. El mateix està passant al futbol.

Pel costat positiu, el futbol no s’ha tornat també més inclusiu?

Absolutament. Als anys vuitanta i noranta, les dones o les persones queer no se sentirien segures en un estadi de la Premier League, i ara sí. En certa manera, la gentrificació ha fet el futbol més accessible per a alguns grups. És clar que ha exclòs una part de la classe treballadora blanca, però una part de la classe treballadora blanca abans excloïa altres grups. Hi he pensat molt, perquè com qualsevol nostàlgic, hi havia una part que no veia. Com a home blanc heterosexual, formo part del grup que abans posseïa l’estadi, i per això mai no vaig experimentar l’exclusió.

Però la securitització i l’expulsió de la gent pels preus no són les úniques opcions per combatre la discriminació, i els aficionats més rics no són necessàriament menys racistes. Molt del sexisme, l’homofòbia i el racisme que veus als estadis és performatiu. Per tant, el camí a seguir és redefinir el paper de l’aficionat. Alemanya mostra que es poden tenir estadis assequibles que també siguin més inclusius. Funciona millor quan són els mateixos aficionats els qui es controlen i es moderen mútuament. El Borussia Dortmund, per exemple, tenia un problema important amb neonazis als anys vuitanta i, en gran mesura, va aconseguir expulsar-los.

La popularitat del futbol femení està explotant. Pot ser una alternativa més saludable a les dinàmiques que has estat descrivint?

Sovint recorrem a les dones per resoldre els problemes que han creat els homes. Diem que els homes són així, de manera que necessitem més dones, perquè les dones són diferents. Però les dones no són necessàriament millors que els homes. Si l’estructura t’empeny en una determinada direcció, no importa qui siguis. En l’estructura actual, que el futbol femení continuï sent “pur” també voldria dir que les dones continuïn cobrant molt menys que els homes en nom d’algun ideal, i no crec que això sigui just.

En qualsevol cas, sembla que el futbol femení s’està transformant ràpidament al futbol modern i avança en la mateixa direcció que el futbol masculí —potencialment fins i tot més de pressa. La propietat de varis clubs ja és una realitat. Als EUA, un club de Columbus, Ohio, ha pagat recentment 200 milions de dòlars a la National Women’s Soccer League per incorporar-se a la lliga el 2028. Això són molts més diners del que s’està gastant en les jugadores.

Tot i així, molts clubs de futbol femení són més actius políticament que els clubs masculins, perquè les jugadores són més explícites. Ser futbolista dona encara es veu com una transgressió, de manera que tendeixes a estar més compromesa políticament. Però quant menys transgressor i més mercantilitzat es torni el futbol femení, menys polític serà. De moment, continua sent una via d’escapament per a molts aficionats perquè és més assequible i més divertit —sens dubte per als grups minoritaris, i particularment per a les persones queer.

On se situa el futbol femení pel que fa a la seva dimensió comunitària i de societat civil?

Gairebé tots els clubs femenins han estat fundats per clubs masculins, de manera que molt pocs són realment l’expressió d’una comunitat. Hi ha excepcions, com el Turbine Potsdam a Alemanya, que és un dels equips femenins amb més èxit del país. Però ara han estat superats per clubs com el Bayern de Munic i el Wolfsburg, perquè no pots competir amb els gegants.

Tanmateix, la majoria dels aficionats al futbol femení tenen un propòsit polític, i en aquest sentit són l’expressió d’una comunitat. Molts aficionats subratllen que hi són per donar suport a l’esport femení, no a un club concret. Ningú no va a un partit de futbol masculí per donar suport al moviment. Per tant, hi ha un element de comunitat.

Translated by Sandra Cruz

The Unfinished Story of Romania’s Annulled Election

Nearly two years after the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul Romania’s 2024 presidential election, there is no clear end in sight to one of the most divisive political sagas in the country’s recent history. With anti-establishment sentiment on the rise, evidence of Russian interference might not settle the matter and rebuild trust with citizens.

Since his election as president in Romania’s May 2025 re-run, Nicușor Dan has yet to fulfil a key campaign promise: releasing a detailed report explaining why the Constitutional Court cancelled the 2024 presidential race after far-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round with nearly 23 per cent of the vote.

The Court justified its unprecedented intervention on the basis of intelligence assessments alleging a coordinated foreign interference operation. According to those evaluations, the campaign involved illicit financing, online manipulation, and Russian-linked networks that artificially boosted Georgescu’s visibility on platforms such as TikTok.

Dan repeatedly promised greater transparency on the matter. He initially suggested the report would likely be released by the end of January 2026. Officials within the presidential administration later shifted the expected release date to the end of April. However, no report was published. Then, the president said that it would come out later this year, without providing a clear timeline.

In the absence of the promised report, Dan has nevertheless made increasingly categorical public claims. He has stated that, “without a doubt”, Georgescu had benefited from “an infrastructure created by Russia”. Dan has also argued that Romania has been the target of Russian hybrid warfare for at least a decade, and suggested that around 90 per cent of the information gathered by state authorities could eventually be disclosed publicly.

Dan may be right. The interference may have been real, serious, and well-documented. Still, there remains a consequential question that no authority has publicly addressed: Was annulling the election a proportionate response? Did the alleged Russian campaign decisively distort the result, or did nearly a quarter of Romanian voters choose Georgescu for reasons of their own?

The legitimacy of the annulment ultimately depends not only on what happened, but on whether what happened justified one of the most extraordinary interventions possible in a democratic process. And even proving proportionality may not be enough in a country where trust in institutions has been eroding long before 2024, and where, for many, the verdict on that question has already been reached.

Uncharted territory

In March 2025 and in the wake of Romania’s decision to annul the elections, the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters, released a report examining when constitutional courts may invalidate elections. The Commission emphasised that annulment should be a measure of last resort, reserved for exceptional circumstances and supported by clear evidence. Under international democratic standards, the Commission stressed, results should only be annulled when irregularities can be shown to have directly affected the vote’s outcome.

That is a high bar, and the Commission noted it is especially difficult to meet when the alleged irregularities concern online campaigning rather than voting or ballot counting. It added that online political speech is generally protected by freedom of expression standards, making it “currently hard to see how the form and content of campaign messaging of candidates could amount to a violation of electoral law that may lead to the annulment of the elections”.

How feasible, then, is it to demonstrate that the irregularities in campaigning invoked by Romania’s Constitutional Court determined the voting results? Luciana Alexandra Ghica, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest, argues that the challenge is notable. Establishing such a causal link requires long-term technical data, sustained multidisciplinary cooperation, and, above all, political will.

“This might be the most difficult part,” she explained, adding that success depends on “the mechanisms needed to support such an effort.” In her assessment, Romania currently lacks much of that institutional capacity, with “too little coordination, too little recognition of experts, and too many appointments based on personal connections”.

What the evidence shows

In its decision to annul the election, Romania’s Constitutional Court concluded that the electoral process had been “compromised throughout its entire course” by irregularities that “distorted the free and fair nature of the vote,” linking it to a coordinated foreign interference operation. Yet the ruling did not explain why annulment was a proportionate response, nor did it attempt to demonstrate how the alleged irregularities concretely affected the outcome.

Subsequent investigations have strengthened the case that Romania was indeed targeted by a sophisticated influence campaign. In September 2025, the General Prosecutor’s office published a report that Dan presented to European leaders the following month. The report exposes a coordinated Russian-linked operation of considerable scale. It states that companies including AdNow, MGID, Geozo, and AdsKeeper built a large online influence network using fake social media pages, AI-generated content, and native advertising, as well as cloned doppelgänger websites designed to mimic trusted news outlets and public institutions.

Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

More than 2,000 Facebook pages and coordinated Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and clickbait ecosystems were allegedly activated to identify and grow receptive audiences by manipulating vulnerable individuals, spreading anti-government information, and eroding trust in institutions ahead of Romania’s 2024 elections.

Then, closer to polling day, the same pre-built ecosystem was reportedly “activated” or repurposed more explicitly for electoral influence, with content shifting toward coordinated messaging that supported Georgescu and amplified political disinformation during the campaign period.

These findings are substantial, but they do not resolve the question of proportionality. Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, whether Georgescu’s performance depended decisively on the operation, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

Lingering questions

Two considerations make the proportionality case harder to establish. One is the question of why voters supported Georgescu in the first place. While official explanations for the annulment have focused on foreign interference, analysts argue domestic political and social grievances also played a significant role in boosting his appeal. “External interference overlapped with internal anxiety, with Russia’s hybrid campaign exploiting a level of weakness within our own democracy,” stressed Ioan Stanomir, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest.

A key component of this anxiety was socio-economic dislocation. According to Stefan Hofmann, the head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Romania, large segments of the electorate felt “isolated and shut out from opportunity”, particularly amid widening inequality. Georgescu was able to harness those frustrations by offering voters something more visceral than policy: a sense of belonging, identity, and recognition. “A discourse like Georgescu’s addresses the disorientation and fear people felt,” Hofmann said.

The second consideration is that this pattern was not unique to Georgescu. Elena Lasconi, the runner-up of the first round of the 2024 election, also sat outside the mainstream political establishment and made the corruption and failures of the political class a key theme of her campaign.

That both frontrunners emerged as vehicles for anti-establishment sentiment points to a broader public dissatisfaction that predated the election and cannot easily be attributed to foreign influence alone. “When voters want to channel their frustration, to put it mildly, they turn to options outside the political mainstream,” Hofmann said.

The stronger the role played by genuine domestic grievances, the harder it becomes to demonstrate that foreign interference was a decisive causal factor in producing Georgescu’s success. Hofmann notes that Romanian authorities could have considered a more targeted measure, like disqualifying Georgescu, while allowing the second round to proceed. Such an approach would have addressed concerns surrounding him without invalidating the votes already cast by millions of Romanians.

Whether that or other alternatives would have been legally viable or politically preferable, remains open to debate.

The counter-narrative

In the absence of a fully consolidated public justification, the annulment has not settled into a single authoritative interpretation. Instead, it has become a contested political reference point, increasingly shaped outside formal institutional channels. Many Romanians doubted from the outset that the circumstances justified the Constitutional Court’s decision. An IRES poll conducted shortly after the annulment found that 62 per cent of respondents considered it a bad one.

Public trust in institutions has continued to decline since then. An INSCOP poll comparing July 2025 with January 2026 showed trust in the presidency falling from nearly 35 per cent to around 28 per cent, while trust in Parliament dropped from 14.5 per cent to just under 12 per cent.

At the same time, support for far-right parties and figures has grown. A January 2026 CURS poll found Georgescu to be the most trusted political figure in the country with an approval rating of 36 per cent. Following him were George Simion – another far-right figure who lost to Nicușor Dan in 2025 – at 32 per cent, and Dan at 31 per cent. Meanwhile, an INSCOP survey on parliamentary voting intention placed the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) – the party founded and chaired by Simion – at around 38 per cent, significantly ahead of any competitor.

For AUR and Georgescu, the annulment has become a central mobilising narrative, framed as evidence of systemic illegitimacy: the 2024 election was “stolen”, Georgescu is the rightful president, and all Romanian elections are vulnerable to manipulation. In response to Dan’s report presented to European leaders, AUR published its own assessment, describing the annulment as a “state coup” carried out through “unconstitutional means”.

In AUR’s framing, Russia’s intervention in the election was used as the pretext to justify the coup. The report concludes that Romania is “not a democracy”, and that “the coup has exposed the general vulnerability of state institutions and of the oligarchic system governing the country”. In November 2025, when speaking about municipal elections in Bucharest, Georgescu argued that “all these elections are a farce”.

In 2026, he once again claimed that the annulment was an act of “desperation” because the Romanian people were about to “take back their country”. He added that the Constitutional Court’s decision was conducted with “external colleagues, namely the European Union,” thus inverting the foreign interference narrative to implicate Brussels rather than Moscow.

According to Ghica, the narratives being pushed by Georgescu and his allies are unlikely to fade quickly. Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward. What makes this particularly hard to reverse, Ghica argues, is that the audiences most exposed to these narratives are also the least equipped to scrutinise them: people with “limited digital and functional literacy, heavily reliant on social media, and affected by considerable social and economic inequalities.”

Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward.

Dan’s quicksand

While the “stolen election” narrative has provided AUR and Georgescu with a powerful mobilising tool, it does not fully explain their sustained popularity. Anti-establishment sentiment has been further reinforced by a broader climate of political instability that Dan’s first year in office has done little to change.

Dan, a former mayor of Bucharest, came to office as an outsider candidate, promising reform and a break with established political practices. That positioning made him vulnerable to any perception of indecision or continuity with the system he had promised to change. His first year as president has supplied critics with considerable material.

The most significant test came in early May 2026, when a no-confidence motion brought down the government of prime minister Ilie Bolojan. The procedure was initiated by the Social Democrats and AUR over painful austerity measures and tax increases introduced to address Romania’s fiscal deficit, the largest in the EU at 9.3 per cent of GDP in 2024 and 7.9 per cent in 2025.

For the Social Democrats, this was also a political escape from the costs of staying in power as unpopular fiscal measures hit their voters and patronage networks, while AUR used the moment to amplify its anti-austerity, anti-establishment message.

Dan declined to publicly back Bolojan, arguing that his role was that of a mediator. Critics, however, say Dan’s position implicitly validated the legitimacy of the Social Democrats’ move. They are also openly questioning whether the president’s passivity in this and other matters can bring stability, or whether it surrenders control over key political outcomes to other forces, such as the Social Democrats.

Amid heightened political turmoil, the no-confidence motion passed. Dan subsequently sought to reassure the public, insisting that Romania remained stable. But as weeks passed without the confirmation of a new government, his assurances rang increasingly hollow.

“President Dan is in a delicate situation,” stressed Professor Stanomir. “One year after his election, he is compelled to rebuild a parliamentary majority. Such a challenge is likely to affect the years of his mandate that lie ahead.”

The rule, not the exception

Romania has not been the only target of Russian electoral interference in the EU. Ahead of Poland’s 2025 presidential election, minister of digital affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski publicly warned of an “unprecedented” Russian attempt to influence the vote via cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation. Yet the elections proceeded.

In Croatia’s 2025 presidential election, researchers found that Russian-linked bots and disinformation campaigns favoured the anti-NATO candidate, Zoran Milanović, spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media platforms to sway public opinion.

The EU has begun responding. In December 2024, the Commission launched a formal investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act, following the release of Romanian intelligence reports suggesting the platform had been used to facilitate foreign interference.

In an email exchange, a Commission spokesperson confirmed to me that the proceedings remain ongoing. The outcome of this initiative could have lasting implications for the role of major tech platforms in electoral processes and, more broadly, for the influence of privately owned tech companies on democratic institutions. Nevertheless, the Commission has been careful to define the limits of its role. “The organisation and conduct of elections is a national competence,” the spokesperson said. “Elections have always been and will always remain in the hands of the citizens.”

That delineation matters. The EU can pressure platforms to “protect the integrity of elections through the Digital Services Act” and sanction individuals linked to disinformation campaigns. It can also support member states through bodies like the newly established European Centre for Democratic Resilience, which aims to help EU countries build their capacity to detect threats to democratic processes and strengthen resilience.

What the EU cannot do is answer the questions that Romania’s annulment continues to raise. Those questions remain Romania’s to resolve.

Can the loose ends be tied?

This is why the long-promised presidential report matters. Its most important task is not simply to establish what happened, but to explain why the response that followed was necessary and why less intrusive alternatives would have been insufficient to protect the integrity of the democratic process.

But even a report that does so convincingly may not be enough to reverse the continued decline in trust in institutions or the rising support for anti-establishment forces in Romania.

A detailed account might settle some of the concrete disputes that have festered since the annulment, like Georgescu’s claim that he is the rightful president. Rebuilding trust, however, will require more than evidence alone. “To get back some level of trust, people’s feelings have to be acknowledged and understood,” KAS’ Hofmann said, both in relation to the 2024 election and the broader dissatisfaction that preceded it. Romania’s traditional parties, he suggests, need to confront their own record more openly, even when doing so means acknowledging uncomfortable truths.

Ghica sees the structural obstacles as even more daunting. Trust in democratic processes and electoral integrity could be re-established, she argues, only through sustained, coordinated effort. “Time is not on our side in this hybrid war. The levels of social polarisation, digital and functional illiteracy, as well as economic inequality, which generates frustration toward others and toward authorities, remain very high.”

Toppling the AI Empire

As the techno-authoritarian race to develop advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies continues at full steam, Silicon Valley’s sway over regulatory agendas has come to rival – even surpass – that of many states. Yet, between the ambitions of global superpowers and AI giants, Europe has the opportunity to seek something better. An interview with award-winning journalist and author Karen Hao.

Alessio Giussani: Several metaphors have been evoked to describe the current model of AI development – a parrot or a mirror, for example. Why did you choose that of empire?

Karen Hao: I think those metaphors are all extremely useful. I focus on empire because I’m not just looking at the technical artefact itself and what happens when it’s deployed in society, but also at the production of this technology and the actors who consolidate an extraordinary amount of economic and political power to produce it.

There are four main reasons why I call this system an empire. First, these companies lay claim to resources that are not theirs: individuals’ data, as well as the work of writers and creators. Second, they exploit an extraordinary amount of labour, and that goes for the workers they exploit within the production process and the supply chain of these technologies, as well as the workers whose labour rights are eroded when the technology is deployed.

The third aspect is information control. A major facet of empires’ expansion is the ability to filter all knowledge production and information through the lens of their imperial agenda, and this is precisely what AI companies are doing. They control and censor the science that gets produced by bankrolling most AI researchers, and they are building an information technology that they seek to make the central portal through which everyone else engages with the world, including in education.

Lastly, they wrap all this in a civilising mission. They say that they’re engaging in this work because ultimately they are trying to bring humanity a technology that will elevate us to a utopian state, and if the bad guys – which usually means China – develop it before us, then we will instead descend into a dystopian state. This is a kind of religious narrative that was also common among empires of old.

The AI empire, as you are describing it, is not limited to a company; it’s a system, a logic. What lies behind your focus on OpenAI and on the figure of its CEO, Sam Altman?

One answer is that people need stories to help make concrete what would otherwise be an abstract idea. But OpenAI is also particularly interesting because it made all of the major decisions that changed the norms within the industry, pushing it towards empire-building. It was OpenAI that decided to scale at all costs, to work with large language models, and produce a chatbot-like interface for them. Pretty much everything that the public understands to be associated with AI today was first decided within OpenAI’s walls.

By telling that history, it becomes much more obvious that AI is not inevitable, because you start to realise there were real people making those decisions based on their values, their worldviews, their personal vendettas – whatever it is that actually shaped the trajectory of AI development. Sam Altman’s ideologies are imbued in the model, not just in an abstract sense. You often hear the truism that models reflect their creators, but I wanted to show how this actually happens. It’s about the companies, the people, and the economic and ideological environment they are part of.

As these technologies grow more powerful, asserting control over their deployment is becoming an existential question. We saw Big Tech bowing to Trump at his second inauguration, but we are also seeing AI CEOs increasingly at odds with the government. Who will end up having the final say – the state or private companies?

There is an ongoing battle for who’s going to call the shots. I see the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley as an alliance of convenience, but a very fraught one. They represent two different models of empire, each with its own imperial agenda. Both are trying to expand and quite literally take over more land from other countries, but the Trump administration sees AI companies as tools in the hands of the state’s imperial ambitions. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley sees the Trump administration as a tool of their imperial ambitions, but they’re not actually on the same page, because each of them wants to be the supreme entity that comes out on top.

There have been moments when the US government has demonstrated that it’s still on top – when Trump and Musk collided, Musk got booted out. However, when the Department of War clashed with Anthropic, the company showed that it was the stronger power in that instance: Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth evoked the nuclear option, threatening to declare the company a supply chain risk as the ultimate stick that he could whack to get Anthropic in line, and the company still didn’t get in line. Quite embarrassingly, the Department of War has become deeply dependent on a private actor that is unwilling to cooperate on the government’s terms, and the government can do nothing about it.

There needs to be accountability for both of these imperial actors, and that accountability will not come from either of them; it has to come from the people. From bottom-up, grassroots organising, which we are beginning to see blossoming all around the world, including in the US. As impervious as the alliance of convenience may appear, it is actually extremely fragile, and there are opportunities to accelerate its demise by applying more pressure at its pain points.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society.

The state of AI development looks like a competitive race to the bottom between rival companies and global superpowers. What role has geopolitical competition with China played in bringing AI to its current predicament?

China is a card that Silicon Valley has played for a decade, pretty much ever since it got kicked out of China. But when you look at the track record of this argument, you see that what has happened is consistently the opposite of what Silicon Valley said would happen.

They said that by not regulating Silicon Valley companies – and by regulating China through export controls – American technology would dominate worldwide. Yet TikTok is now the most popular social media platform, and Chinese open-source AI models are becoming more and more popular around the world, including in the US. They also promised that Silicon Valley dominance would have a liberalising effect on the world, but that hasn’t come to pass either; their effect has been deeply illiberalising. There has been an extraordinary erosion of democratic institutions and a rapid acceleration of democratic backsliding, aided by Silicon Valley platforms and AI technologies.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society, what kind of AI technologies would support that vision, and what resources we need to bring it about. We should be competing not in a race Silicon Valley defined, but on the ideas and values we want to uphold. And I believe Europe has an opportunity here to show the world a third way, different from those of the US and China, that resets the rules of the game.

The European Commission has recently adopted a tech sovereignty package as part of Europe’s effort to chart its own technological path. How should we articulate this vision to avoid ending up with a European version of a surveillance-based, oligarchic business model?

The North Star that Europe should be following is not sovereignty for sovereignty’s sake, but the purpose of achieving that sovereignty. Europe, or at least most of it, is one of the last bastions of democracy in the world. It upholds human rights and freedoms, and it needs tech sovereignty to help advance these values. As long as it remains extremely dependent on systems being developed in a very authoritarian way and seeking to undermine European societies, it cannot uphold its values. Sovereignty as a concept tends to become vague if you just start thinking about it as a goal in and of itself. It should be a means towards a purpose.

What kind of coalitions, constituencies, or sites of conflict should we be starting from in order to build that alternative vision?

First of all, we should understand AI governance in an expansive way. Strengthening labour rights and protecting civil society, for example, counts as AI governance. Students, teachers, and health care workers should also be at the table to help shape and contest how AI is developed and deployed in society. Education is key, both as a sector and a coalition that we need to bring in, and in terms of public education around AI.

Another important aspect is funding AI researchers and entrepreneurs to figure out the more technical aspects of what you are trying to build and how you want to apply it. But you can’t just give them money without allowing the rest of society a say; otherwise, you are just replicating the problems we have in the US, where it’s essentially technocrats or techno-authoritarians calling the shots.

You are not starting from scratch. A lot of work has already been done to establish the common goals society should strive towards. I’m talking about the Sustainable Development Goals, for example. That could be a starting point for figuring out how to fund AI innovation.

The narratives around current AI technologies are extremely polarised. On one side, you have those who say there’s nothing particularly new about these technologies, and that the bubble is about to burst. On the other, you have those who believe AI will transform our lives, revolutionise supply chains, and make us all redundant. What do you make of these different stances?

It’s true, many people tend to exaggerate the benefits without considering the costs of these technologies, or overemphasise the costs without seeing the benefits. But I think there’s quite a large percentage of people who agree that we want the benefits of AI, but not at the cost of our own ability to live a dignified life, with access to good health care, economic opportunity, a healthy environment, and a flourishing planet. That’s the most balanced approach to take.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build, because they each come with a different set of trade-offs; some of those align with the future that we want to build, and some others don’t. We should choose wisely.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build.

What’s your own relationship with existing AI tools?

I don’t use them for three main reasons. One, the ethical stance. Two, the privacy stance: I’m investigating these companies, and they are ultimately the most effective surveillance technologies ever invented. Three, these tools are not very useful for the particular skill set that I need to perform my job.

I’m not saying that everyone should do the same. I’ve talked with many people who clearly get something out of these tools, or are required to use them as part of their professional role. Rather, the way to get out of the current problem is to do the same that we’ve done with other industries in the past, like the fashion industry. When we discovered that many of our clothes were being produced in a really horrific way, we didn’t just get rid of clothes. There was a lot of consumer and worker organising, government regulation, and general public backlash that reined in the industry. Of course, the fashion industry is still far from perfect, but at least there are alternatives now, and consumers can vote with their wallets over what kind of supply chain and corporate practices they endorse.

We need to do the same with AI. There are not enough alternatives for users right now, and for that to change, there needs to be more labour organising and more public backlash. Those who can abstain from these technologies should absolutely boycott them, and governments should step in to help create new markets for alternatives. Consumers have an important lever to pull, but it’s not the only one. As people, as individuals, we also wear the hats of the worker, the educator, and the citizen, and we should think about how to use all those roles in relation to AI development to make it better.

Earth Without People? Ecologism’s Shifting Demographic Imaginary

The link between planetary limits and demography, portrayed in numerous works of fiction, has haunted modern ecological thinking since its origins. While ecologism has freed itself from its Malthusian heritage, focusing instead on our ways of inhabiting the world, it has done so by relegating reproduction to the private sphere, treating it as a political taboo. Between these two extremes lies a conceptual void that is yet to be explored.

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realised that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.”

This scornful observation, addressed by Agent Smith to his prisoner Morpheus in the first film of the Matrix trilogy, serves to legitimise the “technological rationality” of the machine civilisation and its dominion over a humanity reduced to energy slavery. Such arguments are often among the grievances voiced by fictional characters. The most powerful of these is Thanos, the mythical supervillain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Traumatised by the collapse of his homeworld’s ecosystem due to demographic pressures, the Mad Titan sets off in search of the “infinity stones” that will enable him to save the universe from human proliferation – and safeguard the balance of nature – by wiping out half of the living population with a click of his fingers.

Certain misanthropic figures and schools of ecological thought share this conviction that, in order to save the planet, we must rid it of its most burdensome inhabitant. But since none of them are willing to sacrifice themselves to make more room, it is always other people – especially the poorest among us – who are surplus. Jean-Christophe Rufin’s 2007 novel Le parfum d’Adam¹ provides a telling illustration. The book features a radical environmentalist organisation that devises bioterrorist plots – one involving a strain of cholera – to tackle the global threat of overpopulation, beginning with regions such as the favelas of Brazil. These are worthy disciples of English economist Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834), who thought it fit to “court the return of the plague” to naturally control the poorest populations.²

The children of Malthus

Ironically, it seems that progress – technological or otherwise – has begun to answer the Malthusians’ morbid prayers, albeit more indiscriminately than they might have hoped. Besides 4 million deaths globally each year due to air pollution,³ including 180,000 in the EU,⁴ we are collectively subjected to “universal poisoning” that directly attacks our reproductive systems.⁵ Endocrine disruptors including phthalates and BPA – found in food packaging, cosmetics, and children’s toys – reduce sperm quality, bring about early infertility, and cause genital malformations in newborns. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury from our diet and environment accumulate in human tissues, disturbing ovulation and impairing spermatogenesis. Microplastics, ingested through food and water, infiltrate ovaries and testicles, while PFAS – baptised “forever chemicals” – may well shrink the ovarian reserve and increase the rate of miscarriages. To this apocalyptic list we can add highly toxic dioxins, persistent environmental pollutants that, in addition to damaging the immune system and causing cancer, lower the overall fertility rate and increase the risk of complications in pregnancy, thus endangering future generations.

These concrete effects on our biological functions – and therefore also our lives – reveal an ecology of the body itself, in which the environmental crisis becomes a reproductive crisis, intimately connecting demographics and environmental health. It is this conjunction, exploited by a cunning and violent fundamentalist revolutionary movement, that Margaret Atwood presents as a key catalyst for the Republic of Gilead’s patriarchal totalitarian theocracy in her bestselling book The Handmaid’s Tale.⁶ Pollution and plummeting fertility lead to the replacement of democracy with a regime of total population control, in which the bodies of women are literally nationalised in the name of perpetuating society and fulfilling the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply.

The political link between ecologism and demography tragically portrayed here has haunted ecological thinking since its origins – not only as a matter of numbers but as the intimate nexus between body and world. Born in the 1970s from the dual realisation of the limits and contradictions inherent in the industrial-consumerist mode of development, early ecological movements were imbued with the tension between resources and populations.

In the “Meadows report” published by the Club of Rome in 1972,⁷ the fragility of the ecological balance was brought into sharp relief by scientific proof that pollution and resource depletion were inevitable consequences of this model. With the illusion of an infinite planet dispelled, the capitalist promise of universal abundance began to look increasingly shaky. Material growth was more finite than we thought, while the number of people it must be shared between was only going to increase.

It was out of this double crisis of finitude that the modern ecological worldview took shape. When René Dumont ran for the French presidency in 1974, it was the first time an environmentalist had entered politics. During his campaign, he denounced not only the waste inherent in consumerism but also demographic pressures. “It would be possible,” he wrote, “to only authorise a birth rate that precisely offsets the mortality rate, bringing us quickly to zero growth if we used authoritarian methods – which the global threat would justify.”⁸

Early ecological movements were imbued with the tension between resources and populations.

A powerful imaginary was unleashed. Demographics had become the revelatory symbol of a metaphysical threat. The rising number of humans on Earth stood as a metaphor for all the anxieties of the era – hunger, depletion, resource wars, pollution, congestion, urban sprawl, and the disappearance of the countryside – and the collapse of the Promethean certainties at the base of the modern psyche. Conscious of its mortality in the aftermath of Hiroshima, humanity now felt endangered by its own vitality: first the A-bomb, then the H-bomb, and now the “P-bomb”,⁹ a term coined by neo-Malthusian Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and co-founder of the Zero Population Growth movement – a man with close ties to the beginnings of the environmentalist movement and organisations such as Friends of the Earth.

This obsession with overpopulation left a deep impression on early ecological movements and yielded an abundant crop of catastrophist literature and cinema. John Brunner’s 1972 dystopian novel The Sheep Look Up¹⁰ depicts a world saturated with toxins, trash, and systemic violence, where collapse is no longer an unfortunate accident but a way of life. Not only is the population too large; its members are trapped in a hostile, poisoned environment – as if the species itself is imprisoned in its own externalities. Ursula K. Le Guin’s more subtle 1974 novel The Dispossessed offers a confrontation between proprietarian material abundance and a frugal, egalitarian, and compassionate anarchist society.¹¹ Le Guin’s novel can be read as a response to the question that lies at the heart of ecologism: In a world of finite resources, how should life be organised?

A sense of scarcity

Very quickly, these apocalyptic prophecies were confronted by the need for an ethical and political rethinking of economic development. Greens were all too aware that the economic system would not “collapse under the weight of its own contradictions”. Instead, it would reinvent itself by exploiting scarcity itself. It is this logic that Brunner explicitly anticipates by depicting a society trapped in a self-perpetuating scarcity loop. Here, exhaustibility does not put a stop to accumulation but transforms it into ever more voracious and dystopian forms. Ultimately, the challenge first arises in relation to individual behaviour – and thus the representation of the world, humanity, and its place in the universe.

However, reading the 2019 short essay Limits by economist and degrowth theorist Giorgos Kallis,¹² we discover that, contrary to what his heirs may have thought, Malthus was not in fact hostile to population growth. Like Adam Smith and liberals throughout history, he even saw it as the true wealth of nations. But given specific problems of supply, he was plagued by an overwhelming doubt: while our appetites (sexual and alimentary) are unlimited, our material resources are subject to limits. The answer to this contradiction lies in growth. As such, rather than an apostle of degrowth as certain greens and many racist pronatalists obsessed by the “Great Replacement” would have you believe, Malthus was in fact one of the founding fathers of the Church of Growth.

The cornerstone of this Church is a sense of scarcity. The dynamic of economic growth is rooted in the same sentiment, yet this is nothing more than a projection, a preconception of the world. As Kallis underlines, it is a performative vision. In other words, when we hitch our economic growth to future scarcity, whether real or imagined, we end up organising it around the management of that scarcity. That which is scarce is expensive, therefore it pays to organise scarcity. Then there is nothing left to do but stimulate desires and provide the products that can (temporarily) satisfy these cravings. The circle is complete; the economy of limitless desire has found its formula.

Ecotopias

Awareness of limits is at the heart of ecological thinking. And while one of the first limits it imposes is on material desires – a central point in the work of Austrian-French social philosopher André Gorz, for example – there are also limits to those that are immaterial. Published in 1975, American author Ernest Callenbach’s novel Ecotopia is a classic of utopian ecological fiction that offers a mellow counterpoint to totalitarian or catastrophist interpretations of the P-Bomb. The society of the Republic of Ecotopia has stabilised its population, mastered fertility, and organised a form of demographic restraint compatible with its ecological balance – all without trampling on individual freedoms. Unlike the puritan United States from which it has seceded, Ecotopia has also managed to avoid the pitfalls of a deceptive sexual liberation/liberalisation that only perpetuates existing relations of sexual domination – an ambivalence that is central to the work of writer and poet Michel Houellebecq.¹³

When the book’s narrator and protagonist defects to the West, his new ecological homeland, he does so out of love. He is not drawn to Ecotopia by its successful agroecological sustainability, impressive circular economy, or soothing lack of advertising – or even by the beauty of its natural landscapes. Instead, it is the wealth and depth of human relationships, specifically romantic relationships, that can be found there that underpin his decision.

The distinction between love and sexuality and reproduction is one of the anthropological foundations of ecologically restrained societies. Yet this is not always self-evident, for it touches on one of the most intimate aspects of the human condition. French author Camille Leboulanger’s novel Eutopia sheds an original light on this political dimension of family and human reproduction.¹⁴ Eschewing the conflict-driven narrative devices often seen in the “utopias exposed” genre, the novel depicts a world that, in many regards, broadly corresponds to the ideal forms of human relationships and relations of production dreamed of by degrowth theorists.

Eutopia (the “good place” rather than a “non-place”, as the author explains)¹⁵ is first and foremost a work of speculative fiction about a fundamentally egalitarian society that is freed from both labour commodification – in line with sociologist and economist Bernard Friot’s “salary for life” concept¹⁶ – and the dictates of productivity. Yet even under these comfortable and ideal conditions, certain characters remain troubled by existential doubt, suggesting that it is possible to be unhappy in an ideal society. This unease centres around family ties and attachment to one’s lineage, calling into question a key pillar of this degrowth society – namely the reduction of its “human impact index” by, among other things, limiting births to “half a child” per person.

While the point is never Malthusian and the demographic question is not even central, the story raises something deeper. Within the intimacy of human selfhood, this “eutopian” society emancipated from the dictates of productivity comes face to face with an anxiety that transcends the material condition of the species while placing it within its own limits: time.

Reproduction as “the unthought”

Demography is an inscription in time itself. It is that we can trace the source of the moral panics currently engulfing the Western public sphere, fuelling martial language and reactionary politics.¹⁷ Fear of civilisational erasure, loss of territory, loss of relevance, the fading away of the marks we leave behind: demographic anxiety calls into question our relationship with time as much as space.

While such demographic concerns were once a defining feature of ecologism, “green” and “Malthusian” are no longer synonymous. There are three main reasons for this. The first relates to Greens’ definitive entry into the political arena. Since becoming a potential force of governance, Green parties have been unable to reasonably advocate for policies that limit births without coming up against a major objection: bodily and reproductive autonomy (especially for women) and respect for family life and structure are fundamental rights.

A society without children has no way to project itself into its future with hope and imagination.

The second reason is deeper still. As ecologism becomes more refined in its outlook, the focus has shifted from the number of the world’s inhabitants to our ways of inhabiting that world. Resource pressures do not arise from population growth alone. First and foremost, they stem from the ways societies produce, consume, transport, heat, build, eat, and dispose. Evidently, more frugal countries and lifestyles will have a lesser environmental impact than hyper-consumerist ones. Added to this is the fact that social inequalities are also ecological inequalities. Very rapidly, the focus has shifted to reducing material flows, transforming infrastructure, and creating less wasteful systems rather than targeting demography as such.

The final reason is the political and moral corollary of the previous reasons. The debate over birth rates is a minefield where misogynistic, classist, racist, colonial, and anti-Global South tropes can easily surface. Instead, contemporary ecological discourse focuses on transforming the societal model. It speaks as if social life were solely conceived in terms of its visible cycles – extracting, producing, distributing, consuming – but ignores the most fundamental way in which humanity renews itself. Reproduction has become the unthought, a non-object – relegated to the private sphere, the intimate, and quite the political taboo. This is clearly one of the paradoxes of contemporary ecologism: we aim at rebuilding our relationship with the world while setting aside the question of biological and generational transmission.

A future without children?

This is a problem. While demography is no longer front and centre of ecological concerns, it is no less real. With some rare exceptions, societies around the world are getting older, fertility is falling, the desire to raise children is dampened by material constraints, and horizons are shrinking. Added to this are the consequences of eco-anxiety, especially in the younger generations,¹⁸ who experience the future as an emotional weight that is almost impossible to bear.

For some, the decision not to have children has even become an intimate protest against the very idea of reproduction in a world in crisis. In certain green circles, especially in the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada, people are no longer simply decrying overpopulation or pleading for demographic restraint. They are personally refusing to have children in a world deemed too degraded, too uncertain, and too unjust to bring a new generation into it.¹⁹ The fear of being too many has been superseded by one of birthing more children into a world where the future already seems compromised.

This political gesture of a militant minority has legitimate motives, moral force, and power as a form of protest. But the “birth strike” movement also has its limits. Caught in an awkward tension between critique of and retreat from the world, it shifts the responsibility for collective transformation to the level of personal choice, putting little pressure on the structural causes of the crisis.

Ecologism has managed to find solutions to the problem of finite resources by considering emissions, flows, infrastructure, and systems but has paid less attention to what the environmental crisis does to the desire for parenthood, to life choices, and to the ability to see oneself in terms of generational continuity. Between the fear of being too many and the dread of being too few, between the anxiety of overburdening the planet and that of populating it with children doomed to uncertainty, there is a conceptual void that is yet to be explored.

This question must be revisited. Not to rehabilitate a regressive Malthusianism, but rather to cultivate a more comprehensive approach that is able to address the conditions of both social and human reproduction and the affections involved. One that does not stop at transforming the world, but which also considers the ways in which this world is passed on, populated, and renewed – the story it tells itself. Because ultimately, the link between demography and ecologism is a question of the future: Who will come after us, in what kind of world, and with what hopes of making a home in it?

A society without children has no way to project itself into its future with hope and imagination. It renounces the very essence of life, and without the possibility to transcend itself, it risks succumbing to entropy or getting lost in an eternal present devoid of all meaning. It is the entire significance of the human adventure that is brought into question here – in a deeply metaphysical way. What meaning might life on Earth have without human consciousness to bear witness to it?

Translated by Ciarán Lawless | Voxeurop

Jean-Christophe Rufin (2007). Le parfum d’Adam. Paris: Flammarion. ↩︎
“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.” Thomas Robert Malthus (1826). An Essay on the Principle of Population. [6th edition]. London: John Murray. ↩︎
World Health Organization (2024). “Ambient (outdoor) air pollution”. 24 October 2024. Available at <https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health>. ↩︎
European Environment Agency (2025). “Premature deaths due to exposure to fine particulate matter in Europe”. 30 November 2025. Available at <https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/health-impacts-of-exposure-to>. ↩︎
Fabrice Nicolino (2014). Un empoisonnement universel. Uzès: Les liens qui libèrent. ↩︎
Margaret Atwood (1985). The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClellan & Stewart. Also a TV series created by Bruce Miller (2017 – present). ↩︎
Donella Meadows et al. (1972). The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books. ↩︎
Alexandre Moatti (2014). “René Dumont : les quarante ans d’une Utopie”. La Vie des idées. 11 July 2014. Available at <https://laviedesidees.fr/Rene-Dumont-les-quarante-ans-d-une>. ↩︎
Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne H. Ehrlich (1968). The Population Bomb. San Francisco: Sierra Club & New York: Ballantine Books. ↩︎
John Brunner (1972). The Sheep Look Up. New York: Harper & Row. ↩︎
Ursula K. Le Guin (1974). The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. New York: Harper & Row. ↩︎
Giorgos Kallis (2019). Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care. [Stanford Briefs]. Redwood City, California: Stanford University Press. ↩︎
Especially Extension du domaine de la lutte (published in English as Whatever) (Maurice Nadeau, 1994) and Les Particules élémentaires (Atomised) (Flammarion, 1998). ↩︎
Camille Leboulanger (2022). Eutopia. Rennes: Argyll. ↩︎
Camille Leboulanger (2023). “À propos d’Eutopia”. 7 November 2023. Available at <https://camilleleboulanger.fr/a-propos-deutopia/>. ↩︎
Bernard Friot (2014). Émanciper le travail. Paris: La Dispute ↩︎
Such as the French president’s call for “demographic rearmament” on 16 January 2024. See Solène Cordier (2024). “Emmanuel Macron annonce un congé de naissance et un plan contre l’infertilité en vue du « réarmement démographique » du pays”. Le Monde. 17 January 2024. Available at <https://bit.ly/49nfzev>. ↩︎
Louis Jehel & Mathieu Guidère (2024). “Les jeunes générations atteintes d’éco-anxiété : que faire ? Addressing eco-anxiety in young generations: What can be done?”. Médecine de Catastrophe–Urgences Collectives, Vol. 8(2), pp. 149 – 156. Available at <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1279847924000314>.
↩︎
Mark B. Brown (2024). “Birth Strikes, Climate Responsibility, and Hannah Arendt”. The Review of Politics, Vol. 86(4), pp. 438 – 461. Available at <https://doi.org/10.1017/S003467052400024X>. ↩︎

Women, Scapegoats of Poland’s Demographic Crisis

In 2024, Poland recorded one of the lowest fertility rates in the European Union (1.14 children per woman), bringing demographic concerns to the forefront of political debate. As the country is gripped by growing demographic anxiety, women’s reproductive choices remain restricted, while the low birth rate is framed as a moral or cultural failure rather than a structural issue.

Blame and simplification

In 2022, the leader of the then-ruling Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, sparked controversy after “jokingly” suggesting that low birth rates were linked to women’s lifestyles, including drinking alcohol. Three years later, Prime Minister Donald Tusk from the rival Civic Coalition echoed a similarly simplified narrative. In an interview with The Times, he argued that young people, especially women, avoid parenthood not because of housing or financial constraints but because they “don’t like this way of life, the obligations, the responsibilities”.

According to Monika Mynarska, a professor of psychology at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and director of the Families and Generations Lab, such claims rely on a narrow understanding of reproductive decisions. Mynarska notes, “Whenever I hear that Polish women are deciding not to have children because they are afraid of responsibility, my first question is, What about Polish men?” Parenthood, she stresses, is a joint decision, and men are now more involved in childcare even though inequalities persist. Nevertheless, public debate continues to frame low fertility as a problem of women’s attitudes.

Despite the record-low fertility rate, most people in Poland still express a desire to have children. Understanding the country’s demographic crisis requires moving beyond simple explanations. As Mynarska notes, there is no single cause of low fertility. From an individual’s perspective, recurring concerns include economic insecurity, high housing costs, unstable employment, difficulties reconciling work and family life, problems within the healthcare system – including prenatal care –, and even fears of war.

In other words, individual decisions cannot be separated from broader structural transformations. Mynarska explains that Poland, like many other countries, has entered a stage of demographic development where low fertility is normal. Comparisons to the past – when conditions were often materially worse, yet birth rates were higher – are therefore misleading.

The consequences of control

In the past decade, Poland has significantly restricted reproductive rights, justifying these changes primarily on the grounds of “protecting life”. A 2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling banned abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormalities – the stated reason for more than 97 per cent of Poland’s legal abortions up until then –, allowing only two exceptions: when the pregnancy results from a criminal act or when it poses a threat to the woman’s life or health.

The consequences have been profound. In 2021, a 30-year-old woman named Izabela died of septic shock after being denied a timely abortion, even though scans had shown numerous defects in the fetus. Her death sparked nationwide protests and became a symbol of the chilling effect of abortion laws on medical practice: doctors, fearing legal repercussions, have at times delayed interventions even in life-threatening situations. Only now, five years later, have the doctors responsible for Izabela’s death been sentenced.

Unsurprisingly, Polish women increasingly view pregnancy as a source of uncertainty and risk. A study by economist Anna Matysiak, Anna Kurowska, and Magdalena Grabowska shows that concerns over restricted access to abortion are among the key factors shaping childbearing decisions, especially among childless women. Their findings suggest that restricting reproductive rights may discourage, rather than increase, fertility. Limited access to prenatal care, the closure of maternity wards, and uneven healthcare quality further deepen this insecurity.

These challenges are even more acute for migrant women, whose experiences remain largely absent from demographic debates. Language barriers, precarious legal status, and restricted access to healthcare make pregnancy significantly more difficult for them.

One instance is the case of a Georgian woman named Lela, who in February 2026 experienced severe pregnancy complications and wanted to undergo an abortion. She received the necessary medical care only after intervention by NGOs and widespread media attention. Information about her situation spread beyond Poland and was shared by the European citizens’ initiative My Voice, My Choice. Once her condition stabilised, Lela decided to continue the pregnancy.

The way forward

Poland has introduced several measures to increase birth rates, such as paid maternity, paternity, and parental leave, investment in nurseries, and tax relief for families. Most of these initiatives concentrate on financial benefits, and while they provide short-term support, their long-term impact on fertility remains limited.

Mynarska argues that people who do not want to have children cannot simply be “encouraged” to do so. Instead of pronatalist slogans, policies should focus on creating conditions that make parenthood feasible: better access to childcare, healthcare, housing, and stable living conditions.

Beyond the numbers, Poland’s demographic crisis is a matter of rights, trust, and the role of the state. Supporting parenthood is less about increasing birth rates than about improving quality of life more broadly, including by providing better access to public transport, education, and environmental protection.

Pronatalism in Hungary: Lessons and Imaginaries

Efforts to boost Hungarian birth rates date back centuries, but the pronatalist agenda gained new momentum under Viktor Orbán. Introduced in 2010, his “family-friendly governance” attacked women’s self-determination and equality, but recent political developments bring hope. A look at the past – and to the future – of demographic policy in Hungary.

“If you don’t own a home, it’s very hard… renting is extremely expensive, especially with utilities on top. My partner and I tried to work it out. If we lived by ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. If we wanted to maintain our standard of living and provide everything for our child, it just wouldn’t be possible. By the third month, we’d already need to take out a loan and go into debt. That’s how it would go, which is why we live with my mother in her house.”¹

In 2018, a young woman from Dombóvár in southwestern Hungary spoke for many when she opened up about her life in the country under then-prime minister Viktor Orbán. Skyrocketing living costs and low wages in rural areas made cohabitation with family members often the only viable path to starting adult life and having children.

Curiously, a range of generous grants, benefits, and tax breaks was available to families with children and couples planning to start a family under the Orbán regime, particularly from 2015 onwards.

These measures belonged to a series of population policy initiatives aimed at triggering a baby boom in Hungary. However, experts raised concerns about their fairness, sustainability, and accessibility. Many key instruments, including tax credits and refunds, strongly favoured high-income married couples. Those who did not align with the regime’s preferred model of the ideal white Christian Hungarian nuclear family, such as non-heterosexual and non-married couples, as well as less well-off couples and families, were marginalised. The country’s Roma minority, who experience higher rates of poverty and exclusion, was disproportionately affected. Babylinked housing subsidies contributed to rising property prices and rents – pushing younger generations towards alternative housing arrangements.

Furthermore, even when young couples were able to take advantage of these financial incentives, this often triggered an ethical paradox.² While they used these schemes to realise plans they already had, many expressed moral unease about having children at a particular time to qualify for state support. As a result, family subsidies became a site of tension and moral negotiation among citizens.

But the most serious concern surrounding this policy direction – ostensibly taken in response to fears over demographic decline in Hungary – was its effect on women, specifically their reproductive autonomy, economic independence, and equality.

Historical roots of the demographic panic

Fears of depopulation have long shaped Hungarian demographic discourse, with experts and politicians repeatedly invoking the spectre of national decline. Although circumstances have changed over the centuries, these narratives have remained remarkably consistent. In modern Hungarian historiography, concerns about demographic decline are often traced back to the aftermath of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon (1920), which drastically redrew Hungary’s borders. Since then, politicians, journalists, and demographers have repeatedly sounded the alarm over national survival.

Fears of depopulation have long shaped Hungarian demographic discourse, with experts and politicians repeatedly invoking the spectre of national decline.

During the interwar, authoritarian Horthy regime, a maternalist framework came to dominate public discourse. From 1928 onwards, women with many children were awarded the Medal of Merit for Valiant Mothers, and comprehensive social policies were introduced to support the agrarian population, particularly large but impoverished families. However, these policies increasingly relied on the confiscation of so-called “Jewish wealth” from the late 1930s onward,³ while disqualifyIng people of Jewish origin from the welfare cooperatives that distributed assistance, giving them a distinctly exclusionary and discriminatory character. The loan-based schemes that were introduced, under which families were exempted from repaying state loans upon the birth of a fourth child, bear a striking resemblance to family policies introduced in the 2010s.

After World War II, a Moscow-backed communist regime was established in Hungary, yet the maternalist framework persisted. In the early 1950s, the state launched a strict anti-abortion campaign, tightening regulations to the point of near prohibition.⁴ At the same time, social benefits for mothers were expanded. Pronatalist discourse continued to draw on longstanding fears of depopulation, though its ideological foundation shifted: higher birth rates were now framed as essential to building the ideal communist society.

The third distinct phase of the twentieth century emerged in the 1970s, when the state socialist regime initiated another demographic campaign. Much like the pronatalist discourse of the interwar years, this approach linked population growth to broader social and economic prosperity. It primarily focused on financial support via a new “childcare allowance” (gyermekgondozási segély, GYES) in 1967. The GYES offered women the opportunity – but also subjected them to the implicit social pressure – to stay at home with their children for the first three years of their lives, supported by limited state compensation. Other measures included the development of healthcare infrastructure and conscious family planning, as well as the re-regulation of strict state committees to review applications for abortion.

Orbán’s illiberal contract with women

While there were sustained challenges to women’s reproductive rights and autonomy from conservative and religious actors following the fall of communism in 1989, it was only after 2010 that a distinctly neo-conservative reproductive regime took shape. In its early years, the emphasis was on material incentives – for instance, families with three or more children benefitted from significant tax reductions, signalling a shift in the country’s approach to social citizenship. The introduction of the Family Housing Subsidy scheme (Családi Otthonteremtési Kedvezmény, CSOK) in 2015 further strengthened the pronatalist direction of population policy by offering families with children financial assistance with buying a home. Beyond demographic goals, these initiatives also aimed to stimulate consumption and give a boost to the construction sector.

The year 2018 marked a further turning point. Following his third consecutive electoral victory, Orbán declared it the “Year of the Families” and, in 2019, launched the Family Protection Action Plan (Családvédelmi Akcióterv). This programme expanded financial incentives, including the “baby-expecting” loan (babaváró hitel), mortgage reductions tied to the birth of children, and lifetime income tax exemptions for mothers of four or more children. According to Orbán, having children is “the most personal public matter”, a framing that reinforces a maternalist narrative in which women are primarily defined through motherhood and provide a service to the state by bearing and raising citizens.

The illiberal “carefare regime”⁵ promoted paid, full-time motherhood as an alternative to participation in the labour market, presenting this arrangement as an attractive option for women. At the same time, it oversaw the privatisation of public services, including healthcare and education, implicitly relying on women’s reproductive labour as a low-cost substitute for state provision. For their part, working women were expected to perform both productive and reproductive labour to maximise state benefits. This process of “housewifisation” functioned as a distinctive – and ultimately largely ineffective – response to broader economic and social challenges.

A further feature of Orbán’s pronatalist drive was the tightening of access to abortion. In 2011, a clause was introduced into the Hungarian constitution that enshrined the protection of life from conception. While this did not result in the criminalisation of abortion, it set the tone for the years to come. Due to “sneaking restrictions” including the outlawing of medical abortion in 2012, the need for self-financing, and increasing bureaucratic and psychological pressure – exacerbated by the controversial “heartbeat decree” introduced in 2022 that obliges doctors to provide pregnant women seeking an abortion with “a clearly identifiable indication of fetal vital signs” before going ahead with a termination –, women under Orbán faced many barriers that made it very difficult to access the procedure.⁶

The illiberal “carefare regime” promoted paid, full-time motherhood as an alternative to participation in the labour market, presenting this arrangement as an attractive option for women.

Consequences of the campaign

Over the past sixteen years, enormous amounts of public money have been spent on the pronatalist ambitions of policymakers in Hungary. At times, family support reached around 5 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, the associated tax benefits have increased year on year.

Despite the money spent, the anticipated baby boom never really arrived, and demographic trends remained largely unchanged. According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office,⁷ in 1998, the number of live births in Hungary was 97,301. After Orbán’s return to power in 2010, birth rates lay at just over 90,000 and stagnated until 2013. This was followed by a brief increase between 2014 and 2017, with a high of just over 93,000 recorded in 2016.

Many of these births were not additional but rather brought forward from future years, echoing the short-term effects of pronatalist campaigns of the 1950s. Following the 2016 high, birth rates fell slightly and then remained relatively stable for a number of years before declining sharply from 2022 onwards. In 2025, Hungary recorded the lowest number of live births in its history, suggesting that the downward trend may be difficult to reverse, particularly if structural challenges remained unaddressed. These include the declining number of women of childbearing age and the continued emigration of young people to Western Europe in search of higher living standards and happier lives.

But while the influence of Orbán’s pronatalist policies on birth rates was ultimately negligible, their impact on women was significant, with increased risks of impoverishment, domestic and obstetric violence, economic dependency, inequality in employment, and the gradual tightening of reproductive rights and decision-making autonomy.

The clearest impact can be seen in the area of reproductive rights. The number of pregnancy terminations has decreased significantly, from approximately 40,000 in 2010 to just over 20,000 in 2024. However, this trend should not be interpreted as a direct result of tighter abortion regulations; it is more reasonably explained by factors such as increased contraceptive use and more conscious family planning, and it has continued independently of legal restrictions. Therefore, fewer women are seeking abortions, but access to the procedure has also become more difficult, particularly affecting young and low-income women, who are more likely to rely on abortion as a last resort for family planning.⁸

Meanwhile, the rate of caesarean sections rose from 38.46 per cent in 2015 to 41.59 per cent in 2024, which Hungarian women’s health campaigners consider to be one manifestation of widespread obstetric violence.⁹ Added to this is the fact that rural obstetric departments have been closing down due to the declining birth rate and the brain drain of medical personnel, while the lack of general practitioners and school nurses is noticeable in everyday life, causing worrying gaps in care.

Another illustration of the effect government policies have had on women’s ability to make life choices free from coercion was a dramatic spike in marriages, peaking in 2021.¹⁰ Within marriages, these policies reinforced traditional gender roles and women’s economic dependency, with higher earning men more able to take advantage of tax breaks without getting involved in child-rearing.

In relation to employment inequality, the (up to) three-year leave period associated with the GYES childcare allowance has generated tensions, not only between employers and employees but also among women themselves. Extended absences for family reasons – and even days off to care for sick children – are often poorly tolerated by employers. As a result, young women are often treated as ticking bombs that could go off at any time. As one woman puts it, “If you have already given birth, that is seen as a disadvantage, because young children may fall ill, and you are therefore undesirable. If you have not yet given birth, you are also undesirable.”¹¹ This reinforces structural disadvantages for women in the labour market.

In 2018, a representative study published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung explored the everyday realities and aspirations of Hungarian women.¹²

It highlighted a range of structural problems, including inadequate working conditions and low wages, a growing care crisis involving both elderly relatives and children, and the tension between demographic expectations placed on women and workplace demands that assume constant availability. In this context, material conditions dominated the discourse, while symbolic political struggles around gender equality and sexual harassment were largely secondary or absent. The analysis points to a grim reality: for many Hungarian women, having children has become an increasingly unaffordable enterprise rather than a realistic life choice.

The greatest challenge lies in caring for children already born, while simultaneously being confronted with repeated calls for higher birth rates. In practice, however, state concern often remains rhetorical, focused primarily on the unborn, both present and future. Couples and single parents who have already fulfilled the regime’s pronatalist expectations are frequently left without sufficient support. At the same time, most women continue to express a desire for children but identify the workplace and a toxic work culture as significant obstacles to achieving a fulfilling life.

Reality knocks at the door

Viktor Orbán relied on various forms of symbolic pressure and political messaging to obscure the structural problems affecting women. Yet, in the spring of 2026, reality came to confront the regime directly.

Following the parliamentary elections in April, centre-right party TISZA gained a landslide victory, and the Orbán regime collapsed. The antiliberal project ultimately failed. It was primarily residents of smaller settlements and towns, many with vocational training or high school diplomas as their highest level of education, who turned against Orbán’s so-called System of National Cooperation (Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere, NER), the ideological and political framework that turned Hungary into an illiberal regime. Healthcare workers, teachers, and civil servants emerged as the clear losers of a corrupt system marked by economic stagnation and the constant emotional strain of state-driven propaganda.

The Hungarian case illustrates a broader tension between demographic policy, gender inequality, and social welfare.

Viktor Orbán and his hegemonic party Fidesz failed to address the everyday realities facing Hungarians. The illiberal “carefare” regime prioritised population growth over quality of life, obscuring more pressing social concerns. By naturalising reproduction as a default aspiration, this discourse reinforced anxieties about national decline and limited the scope of public debate. While Orbán waged symbolic campaigns against pseudo-enemies, the newly elected prime minister Péter Magyar has pledged to refocus on economic policy and to rebuild trust with European allies. For many Hungarian women, such a shift could bring long-awaited relief, particularly if political actors retreat from attempts to regulate their bodies and their private lives.

Reorienting demographic thinking

The Hungarian case illustrates a broader tension between demographic policy, gender inequality, and social welfare. One possible solution in the post-illiberal era is to reorientate demographic thinking from an exclusive focus on increasing birth rates towards improving life expectancy, health, and overall quality of life, and for more equal, democratic approaches to care.

The demographic future proposed by TISZA focuses primarily on diaspora return. The party has announced plans to encourage the return of Hungarians living abroad, many of whom left the country due to economic insecurity and fearmongering politics. A second key element of its electoral programme is improving life expectancy. Since 1981, deaths have consistently outnumbered live births, with annual numbers remaining around 130,000 since 2010. Women also continue to die in slightly higher numbers than men each year. While the programme references the “rehumanisation” of obstetric care and improved access to IVF treatment, it pays comparatively little attention to the persistent demographic pressure placed on women to give birth, which many consider to be revealing of the new government’s stance on these issues.

Compared to the demographic paradigms of previous decades, a policy focus on diaspora return and increased life expectancy would indeed represent a meaningful shift in both rhetoric and practice. By moving away from an exclusive fixation on fertility rates and the regulation of women’s reproductive choices, such an approach could reframe demographic policy around lived lives rather than abstract population targets. Instead of attempting to reverse what may be an irreversible demographic trend, policy and resources should be directed towards improving the wellbeing of those already living. The success of future policies remains an open question, but it certainly points to a more humane horizon for demographic policy.

Anikó Gregor & Eszter Kováts (2018). Nőügyek 2018: társadalmi problémák és megoldási stratégiák: a kutatási eredmények összefoglalója. Budapest: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Available at <https://collections.fes.de/publikationen/ident/fes/14461>. Author’s translation. ↩︎
Szandra Kramarics (2025). “The marketization of family planning: the role of banks as policy actors in Hungarian reproductive policies”. Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, Vol. 11(2), pp. 26–45. Available at <https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v11i2.1368>. ↩︎
Dorottya Szikra (2009). “Social Policy and Anti-Semitic Exclusion before and during World War II in Hungary. The Case of the Productive Social Policy”, in Gisela Hauss & Dagmar Schulte (eds). Amid Social Contradictions: Towards a History of Social Work in Europe. Opladen & Farmington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Available at <https://bit.ly/3QBmcU7>. ↩︎
Andrea Pető & Fanni Svégel (2024). “Nationalism, Pronatalism, and the Guild of Gynecology: The Complex Legacy of Abortion Regulation in Hungary”. Central European History, Vol. 57(4), pp. 499-516. Available at <https://doi:10.1017/S0008938924000037>. ↩︎
Eva Fodor (2022). The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary. Cham: Palgrave Pivot. Available at <https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51949>. ↩︎
Andrea Pető & Fanni Svégel (2024). ↩︎
Hungarian Central Statistical Office (n.d.). “22.1.1.6. Live births, total fertility rate”. Last accessed: 27 April 2026. Available at <https://bit.ly/4tCP4tG>. ↩︎
Fanni Dés & Krisztina Les (2024). “Azt a füzetet nem szabadna mutogatni” Nők élményei Magyarországon az abortuszhoz való hozzáférés gyakorlatáról. Budapest: Patent Egyesület. Available at <https://bit.ly/4uE6uH8>. ↩︎
Andrea Pető & Zsuzsanna Balázs (2026). Viktor Orbán’s Affairs with Women: The Illiberal Playbook: Gender, Power, and Control. Budapest: CEEOL Press. ↩︎
Eurostat (2026). “Marriage and divorce statistics”. Data extracted in March 2026. Available at <https://bit.ly/4dQqLC9>. ↩︎
Anikó Gregor & Eszter Kováts (2018). ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎

Overcoming Presentism: Intergenerational Fairness in Europe

The tension between electoral cycles and long-term thinking has long preoccupied political philosophers. While experiments in institutional design have been underway at the national level for some time, the EU has recently embarked on its own path towards intergenerational fairness. Can a commitment to the future expand democratic possibilities rather than shrink them?

On 4 March 2026, the European Commission published the Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness, the first ever comprehensive political framework at the European level to engage systematically with the fair distribution of opportunities and burdens across generations. Led by Glenn Micallef, the first European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, the initiative also involved a citizens’ panel comprising 150 randomly selected Europeans from all member states.

The significance of this strategy should not be underestimated: in European governance, strategy documents often serve as springboards for subsequent legislation and programmes. They shape discourse, set priorities, and lend structure to the political process.

Intergenerational fairness, as a concept, asks whether the decisions on policies such as climate, public debt, natural resources, and social security taken by those alive today distribute opportunities and burdens justly across generations or secure advantages for the present at the expense of those who will inherit the consequences. Via this route, it could come to shape future decision-making across the EU.

That the EU is engaging with intergenerational fairness as a guiding political principle is, in itself, a significant development. But does the strategy adequately reckon with the structural roots of the problem it seeks to address – democracy’s inherent bias towards the short-term?

The origins of an idea

Intergenerational fairness is pursued as a normative goal for a range of reasons – predominantly moral but also psychological and relational.

According to American political philosopher John Rawls, each generation should adopt principles they would want preceding generations to have followed, no matter how far back in time.¹

From a universalist perspective, it is unjust for one generation to consume resources or cause harm that future generations must bear, because moral duties extend to all persons regardless of when they are alive. If we accept that we should treat future people as moral equals, then obligations of fairness between generations follow as a matter of course.

As for the relational and psychological foundations of intergenerational fairness, American philosopher Samuel Scheffler has shown that our identities extend beyond our individual lifetimes: we care about the future because our sense of meaning is bound up with projects, communities, and relationships that outlast us.² If we contribute to a long-term endeavour through scientific research, institutional reform, or cultural preservation, we do so for people we will never meet, because the significance of our own lives depends on the continued existence of a world that values what we have valued.

Australian philosopher John Passmore’s earlier theorisation of a “chain of love” is complementary. According to this principle, each generation cares for its own children for personal and dynastic reasons, creating a cascading chain of concern that reaches forward across time.³

Indigenous knowledge traditions have long articulated similar beliefs, such as the Seventh Generation principle, which holds that decisions should be evaluated in light of their consequences seven generations hence. More recently, the Future Design research programme led by Japanese economist Tatsuyoshi Saijo has explored how imagining the lives of future people through story telling, deliberative exercises, and practices can strengthen a form of “time-spanning empathy”.

These different theories and ideas converge on the same fundamental claim that justice does not stop at the boundaries of the present.

By focusing specifically on the fair distribution of opportunities, resources, and burdens between successive generations, intergenerational fairness differs from intragenerational fairness, which concerns inequalities among contemporaries, whether these arise from wealth, social class, gender, ethnicity, or geography. These two dimensions of justice interact – since structural disadvantages within a generation can compound across generations – but they remain distinct. In this sense, intergenerational fairness is not a wild card that can be played for any and every concern about social justice.

These different theories and ideas converge on the same fundamental claim that justice does not stop at the boundaries of the present.

Trapped in the present

The plural foundations of intergenerational fairness and the breadth of the intellectual consensus behind it contribute to its political force as an idea. But why, then, has it proven so difficult to translate it into political reality?

The answer lies in a structural deficiency of democratic governance that has been widely discussed in recent years: presentism.

Presentism is not the same as shorttermism; not every short-term action is a form of myopia. In a public health emergency, for instance, deficit spending to protect lives in the present is not only justified but imperative – even if it increases the fiscal burden on future generations. Meanwhile, in constitution-making, too rigid a long-term orientation can itself be intergenerationally unjust, entrenching past preferences at the expense of a future generation’s right to self-determination. What presentism designates is rather the systematic tendency of democratic institutions to privilege the interests of those currently alive at the expense of future citizens. This tendency is not exclusive to democracies. Authoritarian regimes typically display even less concern for futureoriented interests, given their patronage and the absence of accountability. But it is in democracies that the problem is most amenable to structural reform.

The roots of presentism are both electoral and cognitive. Voters, for reasons that are not entirely irrational, tend to favour policies whose benefits materialise in the present or near future and whose costs are deferred. After all, it is not unreasonable to prioritise the tangible over the speculative.

Current demographic trends intensify this dynamic: empirical research has found that with each year of ageing, the odds of supporting increases in child benefits – that is, investment in the next generation – decrease by approximately 4 per cent. Childless elderly people, in particular, are roughly half as likely as parents to support such measures.⁴ One must therefore be cautious about equating more direct democracy, particularly in ageing societies, with less presentism.

Politicians, for their part, operate under the structural pressures of the electoral cycle. Even those who are genuinely committed to long-term outcomes must first win and retain office, and the only way to do so is by catering to the preferences of the current electorate. Political competitions between a candidate promising near-term benefits and one pledging the same benefits in the more distant future do not end up favouring the latter. As John Stuart Mill observed in 1861, “Rulers and ruling classes are under a necessity of considering the interests of those who have the suffrage, but of those who are excluded, it is in their option whether they will do so or not.”⁵

This dynamic breaches the “all-affected principle” central to democratic theory: the idea that all those affected by a decision should have a say in its making. The decisions on climate policy, fiscal strategy, and resource stewardship of citizens alive today profoundly shape the living conditions of people not yet born, who have no voice in the political process, as they cannot vote, petition, protest, or organise. As German philosopher Hans Jonas wrote, “The nonexistent has no lobby, and the unborn are powerless.”⁶

This representation gap is different from the exclusion typically experienced by already existing and marginalised social groups such as women, immigrants, and ethnic minorities, who are present in the here and now and can, in many cases, exert political pressure. Future generations are invisible and unidentifiable.

The roots of presentism are both electoral and cognitive. Voters tend to favour policies whose benefits materialise in the present or near future.

The future branch

The consequences of presentism are most acute in the environmental domain. Scientists refer to our geological epoch as the Anthropocene because the effects of human action on ecosystems reach into the future on timescales that were unimaginable during the Holocene, when our political institutions were designed. Climate change, species extinction, radioactive contamination, the depletion of fossil energy resources, and the accumulation of space debris all involve temporal scales measured in thousands or millions of years. Yet voters and politicians alike keep making decisions that focus narrowly on the present or the near future.

With this in mind, we should not think of the Anthropocene as merely another analytical frame but rather as a wake-up call to reform democracy.

These insights have generated a growing interest in institutional innovation, leading to the creation of offices for future generations (OFGs), tasked with introducing the interests of future citizens into today’s political system. These offices aim to initiate a paradigm shift from a three- to a fourbranch model of government, supplementing the classical legislative, executive, and judicial pillars with a dedicated “future branch”.

Pioneering experiments include Finland’s Committee for the Future, the Commissioner for Future Generations in Israel (2001–2006), the Ombudsman for Future Generations in Hungary (2008–2011), and the Future Generations Commissioner in Wales. There is evidence that such institutions are most democratically legitimate when they possess the right to initiate legislation rather than just delay or veto it. They should be proposers, not preventers, ensuring that long-term concerns are aired at the earliest stage of the policy cycle without adding an extra step to already complex legislation processes.

Strengths and missed opportunities

By articulating intergenerational fairness as a cross-cutting political principle at the European level, the European Commission recognises that political decisions carry long-term consequences, and that democratic systems need institutional mechanisms to reckon with those effects. Its diagnosis of presentism is compelling, and its ambition to mainstream intergenerational thinking across policy domains, as it has already done with gender, reflects a sound understanding that the consequences of presentism manifest in many arenas.

We should not think of the Anthropocene as merely another analytical frame but rather as a wake-up call to reform democracy.

Concrete proposals such as the Intergenerational Fairness Index could become valuable instruments for tracking long-term trends and furnishing political debate with empirical substance. The choice of 16 November as a day marking intergenerational fairness, originating in civil society advocacy, signals receptiveness to civic impulses. The strategy also draws on existing national initiatives, including Finland’s Committee for the Future, Spain’s National Office of Foresight and Strategy, and Malta’s Guardian of Future Generations, demonstrating awareness of the institutional landscape.

Yet it also has significant shortcomings.

The most conspicuous deficiency is institutional. The citizens’ panel had called for the establishment of an independent Council for Intergenerational Fairness at the EU level, comprising a scientific expert panel and an assembly of randomly selected members of the public. This body would have given permanent institutional expression to the interests of future generations within the EU’s decision-making architecture. Yet the strategy did not take up this recommendation, nor does it address the panel’s recommendation to lower the voting age to 16 as a means of strengthening the political voice of younger generations.

Instead, the Commission opted for a gradualist approach, integrating long-term perspectives into existing processes without creating new institutions. But if democratic institutions are structurally predisposed towards discounting the future, then the corrective cannot consist solely of exhortations to those same institutions to think more long-term. The strategy’s own diagnosis undermines the proposed remedy.

A second concern is conceptual. The Commission’s focus on fair places (alongside fair policymaking and fair opportunities) aims to ensure intergenerational fairness across territories. However, it reveals a tendency to stretch the concept of intergenerational fairness beyond its analytical bounds. Regional inequality, addressing disparities in access to education, infrastructure, and employment between urban and rural areas, or between economically strong and structurally disadvantaged regions, is a pressing concern. But it is primarily a question of intragenerational justice because it pertains to differences between contemporaries distinguished by geography, not by their position in time. In Germany, for instance, the enduring inequalities between West and East are profound, yet calls for enhanced inter-state fiscal equalisation are not strictly a matter of intergenerational fairness. If it sacrifices analytical precision in the name of political breadth, the strategy risks diluting its effectiveness. The power of intergenerational fairness derives precisely from its specificity.

A third limitation pertains to fiscal policy. Long before the environmental crisis entered the discourse, public debt was already a central concern of intergenerational justice debates, including for US founding father Thomas Jefferson. Yet the strategy accords this dimension only marginal attention. This is a missed opportunity, not least because the EU’s own treaties acknowledge the importance of balancing revenue and expenditure in the EU budget and directing EU spending overwhelmingly towards investment.

Finally, the strategy’s reliance on soft instruments such as strategic foresight, impact assessments, public consultations, and an AI-enabled “Futures Balance Tool” raises questions about its ability to exert real influence on policymaking. Such instruments already exist at the European level, but their impact has remained limited. The mainstreaming approach places heavy demands on institutional coordination, and when a guiding principle is to be embedded across a multitude of policy fields, there is a risk that responsibilities become diffuse and the agenda is reduced to rhetorical aspirations. While the strategy lays important foundations for intergenerational fairness, the real test of its worth begins now.

A fiscal conservative and a climate activist will draw very different conclusions about what future generations need.

The politics of the long term

There is, however, a deeper question that no strategy document can resolve on its own, and which advocates of intergenerational fairness, ourselves included, must confront honestly.

Intergenerational fairness is a powerful idea, but it is not a cure-all. As we have argued, the concept itself derives its force precisely from its focus on the distribution of opportunities and burdens between successive generations and not every dimension of social inequality. Losing sight of such specificity can put the concept at risk of becoming politically instrumentalised.

The language of future generations can be mobilised to expand political possibilities but also to constrain them. Austerity programmes have been justified in the name of fiscal responsibility towards those who come after, even as they deepened inequality and eroded public services for those alive today. And in some context, appeals to long-term sustainability have been used to resist redistributive claims made by people who are suffering now. When this happens, intergenerational fairness ceases to be a tool for justice and becomes a device for deferring it.

This risk is compounded by the fact that future generations, precisely because they do not yet exist, cannot speak for themselves. Their interests must be interpreted and are inevitably shaped by the political commitments of those doing the interpreting. A fiscal conservative and a climate activist will draw very different conclusions about what future generations need. Future generations can be pulled in whichever direction present-day politics requires, which is why the institutional design matters so much. The question of who speaks on behalf of the unborn is not a technocratic matter but a deeply political one.

The challenge, then, is to ensure that intergenerational fairness expands the horizon of democratic politics rather than narrowing it. This means resisting the temptation to treat the concept as a trump card that overrides democratic deliberation in the present. It means insisting that obligations to future generations do not come at the expense of obligations to those who are marginalised today.

These tensions cannot be resolved by any single strategy, however well intentioned. They must be collectively negotiated, debated, and revisited – which is to say, they must be kept within the domain of democratic politics. The EU’s strategy is a valuable opening move, but the conversation it sparks will need to be more searching, more self-critical, and more willing to engage with the uncomfortable question of whose future is being secured and at whose expense.

John Rawls (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ↩︎
Samuel Scheffler (2013). Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ↩︎
John Passmore (1974). Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions. New York: Scribner. ↩︎
Jörg Tremmel (ed.) (2008). Demographic Change and Intergenerational Justice: The Implementation of Long-Term Thinking in the Political Decision Making Process. Berlin: Springer ↩︎
John Stuart Mill (1861). Considerations on Representative Government. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn. ↩︎
Hans Jonas (1984). The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ↩︎

Social Media Bans for Minors: Cure or Stopgap?

As the harmful effects of social media platforms have become undeniable, the exciting promise of a globalised public square has given way to growing anxieties over uncontrolled digital addiction. Children and adolescents, with their hyperactive cerebral reward systems, are especially vulnerable to algorithms designed to grab users’ attention at any cost. A number of countries, both within and outside Europe, are weighing whether to ban minors from social media. However, some argue that such restrictions will not solve the problem.

Social media has shaped generations in ways both exciting and unsettling. For Guilherme Alexandre Jorge (24, member of Volt Europa in Portugal) and Anna Mazzei (23, member of the Italian Young Greens), it began as a gateway to knowledge and connection. Jorge joined Twitter at 15: “I started following people, then exploring what different topics meant, and I started becoming more aware of issues both globally and locally.” Mazzei, who began using social media at 14, followed pages run by younger creators rather than traditional media, finding them more engaging. “Once I got into activism,” she recalls, “it was also a way to see who shared my views and to follow green activists in Italy and abroad. It helped me to feel part of something.”

More than a decade ago, social media was largely celebrated as a portal to a globalised world: fast access to news, digital encounters with loved ones abroad, and communities bound by shared interests. In 2010, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was named Time’s Person of the Year, emblematic of the promise of this new digital era. Those years now feel distant, and social media has gone from being seen as a revolutionary communication tool to being treated by courts and regulators as a system that maximises attention through aggressive algorithms at the expense of users’ mental health. In 2026, Zuckerberg is more likely to make headlines for legal cases and fines imposed on his company, Meta.

Over 90 per cent of Europeans see an urgent need to protect children online.

According to the 2025 Eurobarometer report The Digital Decade, over 90 per cent of Europeans see an urgent need to protect children online, citing the negative impact of social media on mental health (93 per cent), cyberbullying (92 per cent), and the importance of restricting access to age-inappropriate content (92 per cent). In response to citizens’ concerns, governments have begun taking action. In December 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to enforce a law banning access to social media for users under 16, requiring platforms to implement age detection systems. In Europe, France has passed legislation restricting access for minors under 15 unless parental consent is provided, while Spain is currently advancing a law to ban access for those under 16, with mandatory platform-based age verification. Other countries, including Portugal, Germany, Norway, and Italy, rely primarily on parental consent models for regulating minors’ access.

The European Parliament, too, overwhelmingly backs restricting children’s access to social media. At the end of 2025, it passed a non-binding resolution stating that minors should not access social media before the age of 16, although parents could give consent from age 13. While the document has no legal force, it places political pressure on the European Commission, which now holds the power to turn these recommendations into actual EU legislation.

Digital drug

These developments respond to growing concerns among experts, teachers, and families about excessive smartphone use and the risks social media poses to young people, particularly in terms of mental health, exposure to harmful content, and cyberbullying. While there is broad, across-the-board agreement that social media presents a genuine and pressing challenge, there is far less consensus on how best to address it. Some advocate strict measures like age-based bans, whereas others favour solutions centred on education, digital literacy, and platform accountability, reflecting broader tensions between protection and autonomy and differing views on who should bear responsibility. Consequently, the measures banning social media use for minors have sparked scepticism and debate over whether such restrictions address the root of the problem or merely act as a partial and potentially ineffective fix, raising broader questions about enforcement, privacy, and the role of platforms themselves.

Shortly before proposing the law to restrict social media access for minors in November 2025, the Spanish government presented the most comprehensive study to date on the impact of technology on childhood and adolescence. The study Childhood, Adolescence, and Digital Wellbeing, published by Red.es, UNICEF Spain, the University of Santiago de Compostela, and the Spanish General Council of Computer Engineering, gathers the voices of nearly 100,000 children and adolescents in Spain. According to the research, 41 per cent of children had their own smartphone at age 10 and 76 per cent by age 12. Nearly 20 per cent of those surveyed aged 10 to 20 say they spend more than five hours a day on social media at weekends, and intensive use is associated with higher anxiety, lower quality of life, and greater exposure to harassment, cyberbullying, and digital control in romantic relationships.

Further evidence suggests that by delaying the introduction of smartphones to children until they are 13 or 14 – rather than at 10.8 years, which is the average age in Spain – problems such as video game addiction, exposure to sexting and pornography, and contact with strangers are reduced by half.

“The scientific evidence we have shows that the increasingly early introduction of smartphones, and social media in particular, into the lives of minors is not harmless. It takes away more than it gives,” summarises Antonio Rial, co‑leader of the national study, senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and a leading expert on adolescent behaviour, digital media, and non‑substance addictions.

The adolescent brain, with its hyperactive reward system and still-immature executive control, is highly vulnerable to social media mechanisms designed to capture users’ attention at all costs. Anna Lembke, one of the first researchers to document this effect, wrote in her 2021 book Dopamine Nation, “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”

In other words, parents have good reasons to worry. María Gijón, author of the 2026 book Tú puedes dejar tu móvil si sabes cómo (“You Can Quit Your Phone if You Know How”) and mother to a 12-year-old, directs the Madrid branch of Adolescencia Libre de Móviles (“Smartphone-Free Adolescence”). The movement began in 2023 with a conversation among concerned mothers in a park in Barcelona’s Poblenou district, and has since grown into a nationwide initiative. Its goal is to bring families together around delaying smartphone use for children. “The idea is that if we all agree to wait until later, it becomes easier to resist the social pressure we used to feel to hand over a smartphone at age 12,” Gijón explains. The association, unsurprisingly, supports the Spanish government’s proposed measures to limit minors’ access to social media.

Gijón believes that minors and adolescents are not using their phones for activities like learning how to play the piano or studying three languages. “Those cases are a needle in a haystack,” she explains. “What we are talking about here is public health, and in public health we have to focus on the majority.” Rial and Gijón both emphasise that banning social media use for minors under 16 would protect economically vulnerable families in particular, as the children of poorer households tend to use digital devices more excessively than others. While digital addiction is a global problem that does not differ by socio-economic status, race, or gender, not every child has the opportunity to attend a good school where they can be guided in the proper use of technology. “The lower the socio-economic level, the greater the misinformation and, likely, the greater the harm. This makes preventive action through legislation even more necessary,” says Rial.

The expert’s position is clear: social media should be illegal for minors, just as alcohol and tobacco are. “For once and for all, policymakers have sided with minors, who need to be protected. They have sided with families, who need support and guidance. And they have called out the tech industry, making it clear that the greatest share of responsibility lies with them, not with the children or their families,” he says.

Disease and cure

As governments move to regulate platforms, the tech industry has responded shrewdly, flooding public discourse with content that highlights the benefits of social media and presents digital education as the primary solution to mitigate its shortcomings. But there are also experts who, despite criticising the way these platforms operate, oppose measures that restrict minors’ access, arguing that the cure may be worse than the disease.

Those who believe minors should retain access argue that social media provides adolescents with information, connection, and role models they might not encounter in their family or school environments. For many marginalised groups, these social platforms have served as a vital space for self-expression and finding community. “If we pursue bans without exploring alternatives, we end up depriving them of participation in public life, as well as a wide range of opportunities for connection and learning,” says Marta G. Franco, a journalist, social media expert, and author of the 2024 book Las redes son nuestras (“Social Media Is Ours”), who describes herself as “citizen of the Internet since 1999”.

Alexandra Geese, a Green member of the European Parliament who works on digital issues, agrees: “We shouldn’t punish kids instead of the platforms. A ban should address specific social media platforms that don’t comply with the rules for the protection of minors.” At the same time, she says, “We should support initiatives to build a better internet. They could offer safe spaces for kids and should not be affected by a ban.”

Franco points out that, despite growing calls to restrict social media, government officials continue to rely on these platforms to relay real-time information. She notes, for instance, that following a major train accident in January, the Spanish transport minister shared live updates on rail services via Twitter, underscoring the state’s dependence on social media as an instant communication tool.

Moreover, critics warn that bans would undermine efforts to enhance youth engagement in politics. Mazzei points to a paradox: If 16-year-olds are allowed to vote, as is the case in a growing number of European countries, does it make sense to restrict their access to information on social media until then?

Franco also cautions against drawing sweeping conclusions from studies. While youth anxiety and depression increased around the same time social media became widespread, between 2010 and 2015, other factors – such as the global economic crisis – may have contributed to that outcome. Franco adds that in the United States, where many of these studies originate, screenings began to be conducted among adolescents around the same time, potentially creating the impression of a surge in mental health issues. “Just because two things happen at the same time does not necessarily mean one causes the other. It is even worth asking whether the reverse could be true: that psychological problems may lead to increased social media use,” she notes.

If 16-year-olds are allowed to vote, as is the case in a growing number of European countries, does it make sense to restrict their access to information on social media until then?

Rial disagrees: “Levels of anxiety, somatisation, and depression triple, and the risk of suicide quadruples, among adolescents who clearly show a pattern of maladaptive social media use. Could it be that a young person with emotional deficiencies, or an existing mental health problem, is more likely to develop this type of social media use? Of course. The relationship is bidirectional, but that does not exclude the existence of the first direction.”

Like Rial, Franco is critical of digital spaces created by private companies and designed to extract maximum profit from our data, and in her work, she advocates for alternative environments that foster healthier interactions. However, she thinks banning access altogether means throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Asking the right question

Nicoleta Prutean, senior governance analyst at the Centre for Future Generations (CFG) and an expert in brain science and psychology, works on shaping policies to safeguard mental health in the era of technological acceleration. She believes that age-based restrictions are a political response to an ill-posed question. “The question, ‘Does social media harm mental health?’ sounds to me very much like asking, ‘Does food harm physical health?’ Food can be good, but also bad.” In her view, the right approach is to ask which features in the design of social media are harmful. “The answers would be the recommender system features, the interface features, the infinite scrolling, the autoplay, the variable rewards that exploit our attention capacity and our reward sensitivity,” she notes. Disregarding the fact that the problems of social media are at the design level risks leaving us vulnerable to new technologies – such as generative AI – that may replicate those features. “If we keep focusing just on social media as a whole and not on the mechanisms, we will miss other technologies where these mechanisms are even stronger.”

Current EU legislation specifically addresses the features of digital platforms that are known to disrupt mental health. “The Digital Services Act (DSA) looks at the right objects, it acknowledges that the design of the systems has a very important role to play and has a financial penalty,” Prutean explains. In February 2026, the European Commission disclosed preliminary DSA findings about TikTok, concluding that its addictive features – such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and highly personalised recommendations – may violate the law by failing to mitigate risks to users’ wellbeing. If confirmed, TikTok could face fines of up to 6 per cent of its global annual turnover, the DSA’s maximum for serious violations.

Disregarding the fact that the problems of social media are at the design level risks leaving us vulnerable to new technologies – such as generative AI – that may replicate those features.

Geese also calls for targeting specific platform practices. “Rather than discussing a general social media ban, we should single out problematic practices like algorithms privileging borderline content, targeting, and addictive features. On the basis of the Digital Services Act, the European Commission could already enforce better rules for social media.”

However, Prutean argues, both the measures restricting minors’ access to social media and the DSA overlook the broader spectrum of mental wellbeing. The former reduces it to the absence of pain, but Prutean also emphasises that, “Being healthy mentally also means being empowered, for example. We shouldn’t hope for future generations just to not be depressed or anxious; we should hope for more.” In the case of the DSA, she notes that harm often occurs long before a clinical pathology emerges. “This is not clearly explicit [in the legislation]. Broadening the definition of mental harm and providing scientific evidence and benchmarks would make these laws more enforceable. The reference to mental health is there, but the threshold for what constitutes harm is just not very clear, making enforcement difficult.”

For Franco, “It’s somewhat paradoxical that we are constantly hearing calls to create new laws, while at the same time Spain is one of the countries [along with Germany and France] supporting the deregulation of data protection laws through the Digital Omnibus, which is currently being debated in the European Commission.” She notes that Spain is also behind in transposing the DSA, which mandates the establishment of a national authority for its implementation.

Holding platforms accountable

A central challenge of measures restricting minors’ access is the age verification system. Australia’s world‑first ban has struggled in practice: the law does not mandate specific technology, leaving platforms to choose their methods. While millions of underage accounts have been closed, many minors remain active because verification tools are imperfect and platforms allow multiple workarounds. By contrast, Spain (and more broadly, the EU) is developing a privacy‑preserving protocol by which users would hold a cryptographic credential – similar to a digital ID – that proves their age without revealing personal details. Stored in a digital wallet, the credential is presented securely to platforms, which are only informed whether or not the user meets the age requirement, not given their full identity.

While Gijón stresses the need to accompany restrictions with an effective age verification system that ensures compliance by platforms (including through penalties severe enough to deter rule-breaking) and prevents minors from easily circumventing the measures, Franco is wary of the risk of online activities being tracked to users’ legal identities. She warns, “No matter how much we are told that it will be handled in a way that doesn’t involve sharing our identity with the platform, any data we leave behind is extremely risky and can potentially be captured in some way.” Geese has similar concerns: “It is vital that no additional data – and in particular, no biometric data – is used. Biometric data can be used for sexualised images or for political surveillance many years later.”

The people interviewed for this article offered different solutions to the social media problem, but they all agreed on two points: that the way social media is currently designed does not exclusively affect minors, and that major tech companies should be held accountable. Jorge notes that while breaking minors’ screen addiction would bring clear benefits, the issue cannot be framed as affecting children and adolescents alone, and that is why intervention needs to focus on the algorithms that drive compulsive engagement. “I’m 24 now, and I am still glued to my phone,” he says. Mazzei, meanwhile, highlights the importance of enabling young people to participate in a digital society, even as she warns against an “unmanaged algorithm”. She does not take a firm position on the debate, but cautions against outright bans, suggesting that “banning” may be the wrong approach: “Maybe restricting or moderating access is better.”

Rial, meanwhile, situates the debate within a wider democratic concern, asking, “If we look at the problem mor deeply, this is a question about the quality of democracy. Studies in the US show that 80 per cent of hate speech is driven by just 20 per cent of users or accounts. What happens with that?”

The digital space, once celebrated as a democratic public forum, today resembles more a shopping mall than a town square. The alternative, Franco argues, lies in fostering different digital environments: “This means greater public collaboration with companies and citizens to build digital spaces based on open-source software and other guiding principles.”

While such collaboration is being attempted, “the mental, physical, and social health of children and adolescents continues to decline,” Gijón worries. “Technology is advancing far faster than legislation, and the only way to protect minors – who lack the capacity to self-regulate in the face of addictive designs or tools – is to delay their age of access.”

Destiny and Choice

Demographic trends cannot be reversed – only navigated. Can societies guarantee wellbeing as the labour force shrinks and fiscal pressures mount? And as older cohorts outnumber the young, is intergenerational conflict inevitable?

This editorial introduces the summer print edition of the Green European Journal, “Life Lines: Navigating Demographic Shifts”. You can read it online or subscribe to receive a copy.

Slow-moving yet seemingly inexorable, demographic shifts have always been about more than just numbers, feeding the political imagination and popular culture alike. What is striking is how widespread panic about overpopulation has, in just a few years, given way to its mirror image: the fear of population decline and civilisational collapse. This anxiety now sits at the core of debates around migration, gender, identity, welfare, and more.

Indeed, since the mid-1960s, Europe’s birth rates have been in decline. In 2024, the total fertility rate in the EU stood at 1.34 live births per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1. Low fertility, combined with rising life expectancy, leads to ageing populations and smaller workforces. These demographic trends are not confined to Europe or the West: while the global population is still growing, largely driven by most of Africa and parts of Asia, it is projected to peak before the end of the century and then begin to decline.

These long-term shifts have complex social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental causes and consequences, making them difficult to steer but impossible to ignore. According to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the EU could have around 43 million fewer people in the labour force by 2070. Economists warn this could put further pressure on public finances, at a time when climate impacts and higher defence spending are already tightening fiscal constraints.

Migration can partly shore up dwindling workforces, but it can also exacerbate demographic imbalances by leaving entire regions depopulated and underserved. This, in turn, increases inequality and plays into feelings of abandonment and resentment, undermining social cohesion and civil preparedness. These dynamics are particularly visible in Eastern Europe, where emigration has compounded the effects of consistently low birth rates. In response, governments in the region have intensified their efforts to attract back citizens who left following their countries’ accession to the EU, with mixed results so far.

Across the continent, age is emerging as an electoral fault line, with young voters exhibiting less attachment to political parties and higher polarisation than older generations. While all people have a tendency to discount the future, a bias towards the present is more pronounced among older cohorts. As they grow in number and their electoral weight increases, support for public spending on pensions and healthcare is likely to surpass that for expenditure on childcare, education, or employment.

In this context, a clash of generations may seem inevitable. But democratic innovations could help avert this – for instance, by rebalancing institutional processes in favour of those most affected by political decisions: children and young people, as well as future generations. To this end, a handful of EU countries have already established legal frameworks that grant voting rights to citizens under 18 (typically at 16). More radical proposals advocate for ageless suffrage, arguing that excluding children from the right to vote is a form of systemic discrimination. In a similar vein, the EU has recently launched a Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness to ensure a just distribution of opportunities, resources, and burdens across generations.

As the debate on social media bans for minors sweeping across Europe illustrates, the boundary between the participation and the protection of young people is not always clear. The days of naive social media utopianism are gone; today, platforms are widely seen less as enablers of a globalised public sphere than as reckless dopamine dealers. But for precisely this reason, some regard age-based bans as a surrogate for meaningful regulation, and it is undeniable that for many young people, social media remains a gateway to finding community and political engagement.

The complex role of social media has been most evident in recent Gen Z protest movements outside Europe. In Nepal, a 2025 ban on 26 platforms ignited discontent that was already boiling beneath the surface. More interconnected and educated than any previous generation, young Nepalese drew on lessons from other movements to defy repression – unseating one prime minister and appointing another within 48 hours. But the role of social media wasn’t only positive: TikTok complied with government censorship, while Discord amplified violent political emotions. Digitally enabled uprisings can nonetheless infuse new political awareness, even when they fall short of their aspirations – as in Kenya, where the violent repression of mass protests in 2024 could not put the genie of change back in the bottle.

That many of the most consequential political mobilisations of recent years have occurred in younger societies also raises questions about the prospects for radical politics in an ageing Europe facing democratic erosion and a rising far right.

Reactionary forces, for their part, claim to have answers to what they frame as a looming “demographic winter”. They have successfully dragged the dominant discourse on migration sharply rightward, stoking fears of “ethnic replacement” and now openly advocating “remigration”. They also want to roll back gender equality and women’s reproductive freedom in the name of demographic revival. However, the carrot of economic incentives for families influences little more than the timing of births, while the stick of coercion only delivers discrimination and suffering – certainly not the baby boom illiberal politicians fantasise about.

Alarmist rhetoric has not remained confined to the far right. In 2024, for example, French president Emmanuel Macron spoke of “demographic rearmament” to combat infertility, while neoliberal institutions routinely talk of Africa’s youth as a “bulge” to be socially engineered into a “dividend”.

In its early days, ecologism bought into demographic panic, too. Concerned about hunger, pollution, and resource depletion, early environmentalists warned of runaway population growth. That analysis was both superficial – how we produce and consume matters more for planetary health than how many of us there are – and prone to weaponisation – since those who are identified as “too many” are too often poor and racialised. Since then, political ecology has shrugged off its Malthusian heritage, but this has come at a cost: by disengaging from demographic questions altogether, it has relegated them to the private sphere and ceded the terrain to conservative framings.

This is a mistake that ecologists have the tools to overcome; after all, the question of how we inhabit the planet cuts to the core of the ecological worldview. Drawing an analogy to climate change may prove useful here. Just as we can no longer fully prevent global warming, we are also in no position to reverse ongoing demographic shifts. But that does not mean that nothing can or should be done. Better childcare, longer parental leave, banning infertility-inducing chemicals, gender equality, and standing for a more peaceful, less anxiogenic world all count as essential mitigation measures.

Adaptation can be equally transformative. It is about reforming democracies to foster participation and intergenerational dialogue, but also reckoning with the true value of paid and unpaid care work, including rehabilitating a sector that has long been undervalued and under-resourced. More fundamentally, however, it means pivoting our entire social and economic model away from productivity and growth and towards care for one another and for the planet.