In our era of relentless crises, politics is trapped in the present, and the future seems to be closing in. The collective act of imagining new possibilities – a core feature of modern democracy – has given way to a politics based on opinion polls, short-term market projections, and economic indicators. Can the EU, itself the expression of a technocratic project, revive a politics of community oriented towards the world to come? A conversation between Elena Polivtseva and Jonathan White, author of In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea.

Elena Polivtseva: In your book, you trace how political discourse has become increasingly driven by crises and emergencies – fuelling public anxiety and demanding more calculated, predictable, and reactive decision-making. A lot has happened since your book came out. How has this trend developed since then?

Jonathan White: Since 2024, the emergency mode in policymaking and political discourse has only intensified. We can even say there is an escalation of this sense of crisis, a bewilderment. A clear impulse for this is the re-election of Trump in the US, which has deepened anxiety and uncertainty about what the future holds, particularly around geopolitics, the old divides between West and East, and traditional security paradigms. Overall, these recent developments have widened the path for a politics obsessed with preparedness, predictability, clarity, and certainty. So, the trends described in the book have only gained more ground.

At the same time, it’s clear that people are turning away from viewing the future in purely calculated terms. For example, the green movement – which directly addresses real threats and offers precise targets – has been losing influence in Europe. These kinds of quantified appeals don’t seem to resonate. Instead, people are drawn to broad, emotionally charged slogans like “Make America Great Again”, which are very ambiguous but manage to invoke a sense of belonging and purpose.

Yes, these years have also been a kind of real-time experiment testing whether an alternative to the current pattern of systemic decay is possible. It comes back to the Trump vote, which signals a desire within society for the unpredictable. This embrace of uncertainty is a form of rebellion against the dominant policy-making impulse to calculate and control the future. People have shown they are eager to step outside the present trajectory, preferring unpredictability over the mere continuation of existing trends.

In this sense, we’re seeing signs of protest against the spirit of reducing the future to numbers and targets, which can be quite limiting because it assumes continuity and isolates one variable as the thing to change. When people rally behind slogans like “Make America Great Again”, they’re rejecting the idea that progress is just a matter of hitting specific decarbonisation figures or growth metrics. They are looking for a shared project that can’t be reduced to metrics – a more holistic vision of change.

There also seems to be an effort to reassert a sense of shared fate and collective future, pushing back against the idea that all we can hope for is incremental personal improvement. In this way, the constant appeals to emergency might actually reverse the ongoing individualisation of societies. Crises are, after all, moments of collectivity – times when your problems become everyone’s problems. 

We’re seeing signs of protest against the spirit of reducing the future to numbers and targets, which can be quite limiting because it assumes continuity and isolates one variable as the thing to change.

So, calculated and quantified visions from politicians do not seem to appeal to people. But power holders continue to demand quantifiable evidence from civil society and other public sectors in order to secure political trust and justify the allocation of public subsidies. We see this clearly in the field of cultural policy, where artists and cultural organisations are increasingly expected not only to prove their impact through clear metrics but also to predict this impact in tangible ways. If there is a natural human tendency to resist these calculated futures and measured dreams, wouldn’t it make sense for decision-makers to change how they engage with public sectors?

Indeed, the accountancy mindset, once born in the economic sector, has now crept into a whole range of other fields. Sometimes people refer to “new public management” as a way of organising institutions since the 1970s, where everything has to be shown to be measurable – the costs and benefits quantified, value for money demonstrated. You always have to be ready to convince someone looking over your shoulder, whether it’s an investor, an accountant, or any figure demanding tangible proof that what you’re doing is justifiable on those terms.

As you say, this probably doesn’t work very well in many sectors. It may not even work particularly well in its supposed core: the corporation or economic actor. Many decisions in business are more improvised than this model suggests. The companies that succeed – if profit is the measure – often do so less because of carefully crafted strategies and budgeted outlooks, and more because of luck, inspiration, or decisions of individual actors at the right moment.

But whether or not this mindset works in that quintessential setting, it certainly doesn’t translate well beyond it, because the essence of creativity is unpredictability. If you could predict exactly where creativity or originality would lead, it means your project would already have been done and even replicated by many people. It’s precisely because it is so hard to foresee – and requires a moment of looking beyond what you can plausibly extrapolate from the present – that it happens at all.

We in academia, of course, have something similar to the art sector in this respect. When you’re trying to secure funding for research projects, if you already know exactly what you want to achieve, then maybe it isn’t actually worth doing, because more or less you already know what it’s about. If the research is genuinely worth pursuing, you’ll probably struggle to justify precisely what you’re trying to do, how you’re going to do it, or what you expect to find, because its significance lies in its unpredictability.

So yes, this accountant’s mentality doesn’t travel well beyond the core components of capitalism – if it even works there. 

Do you think policymakers are also starting to realise that the quantification of public value ultimately reduces it?

Yes, I actually think that people in decision-making positions don’t really believe these modes of operation are relevant either. They aren’t convinced by the metrics; they understand that political change needs a value-driven appeal. Yet we all go along and continue playing the game by its rules. Everyone assumes they’ll be seen as crazy or reckless if they deviate from these established ways of operating.

So, if this accountant mindset across all fields of policymaking is an ideological mechanism, I don’t think it’s about decision-makers losing touch with reality. It’s more about a felt need to adhere to certain practices, because to depart from them would be to expose the weakness of your position, the fragility of your authority, and the essentially arbitrary nature of making decisions under conditions of scarcity. That’s the interesting part: it’s not that decision-makers don’t see it. I think people in every corner of authority are perfectly aware that there’s something hollow about this constant emphasis on calculation. The problem is that we are short of alternative solutions and trapped within existing structures.

I think people in every corner of authority are perfectly aware that there’s something hollow about this constant emphasis on calculation. The problem is that we are short of alternative solutions and trapped within existing structures.

But this public servant trap yet again led to a rebellion in society and politics. Populism is obviously a word that conceals many things, but in shorthand, you might say that populism is a politics of volition – doing what you want to do rather than what you have to do. Much of the support for populist movements over the last 10 or 15 years has been exactly this kind of rebellion. People like Trump, Boris Johnson, or Milei in Argentina all present themselves as charismatic figures who simply refuse to bow to necessity. They don’t do what the economists say they have to do. They don’t follow what the strategists say is required to win elections. They do what they want to do. At least, that’s the public image: being yourself, being authentic, being undisguised in your intentions. So, I think that anyone drawn to those parties on these grounds is perhaps engaged in a form of rebellion.

As someone working in cultural policy and advocacy, I was pleased to see that whenever you described a major paradigm shift in history in your book, there was always some kind of creative element involved. Utopias were often shaped by writers and artists – though of course not always for good. The Futurist Manifesto, for example, was created by an artist and later embraced by fascists. In our sector, we believe that if today’s imagination crisis can be addressed at all, the solution lies partly in the arts. That’s where you can still imagine beyond what exists today – to think about the future in ways not limited by today’s problems. What role do you think arts and artists can play today in reviving “future as a political idea”? Can art help channel that rebellion in society against the status quo into something more meaningful than populism?

I believe art can play an important role here. But from my sense, art has increasingly come to understand itself – especially over the course of the 20th century – in a rather apolitical way: as something that demonstrates its quality precisely by standing apart from philosophical or political disputes. This actually weakens the capacity of art to be that space outside politics from which critical reflection can emerge – the kind of reflection that ultimately makes change possible. 

Yet, art is essential to overcoming today’s crisis of imagination in many ways. First of all, art can historicise the present – to remind us that the lives we are living are not unprecedented or beyond comparison. Art can convince us that we can still understand people in different centuries. Someone can tell the story of a 19th-century life, and it still resonates with us. We can recognise the emotions, hopes, and purposes people had in other eras.

Insofar as art cultivates that sense of cross-temporal understanding, it carries a very important political message. A lot of politics is about building projects that connect us with those who came before and those who will come after. That’s another crucial thing: the space of culture offers the capacity to place the present in context – and to link it to a longer human story. This can happen, for example, through a book that reflects on the past or offers a vision on a future.

As you suggest in your book, a creative idea alone cannot mobilise people. It needs to be given a political shape. So my question isn’t even about what messages artists or their individual works send, but rather: what practices do they offer? What modes of thinking or values do they convey that could be embraced in politics to help build a better future?

I think perhaps one distinction – though not a perfect one – between the Left and the Right is that right-wing politics often invokes ideas of community and shared experience, but rarely pairs this with any real participation in decision-making or control over organisations. For example, the US Republican Party isn’t in any meaningful sense a party in which ordinary people participate.

This politics of the community on the right is often more symbolic than substantive. Even movements like Trumpism keep the fundamentals of the economy intact. In that sense, they are fundamentally status-quo-oriented.

What other parties could potentially offer – but too often fail to – is something different: a politics of community grounded in actual involvement, self-determination, and real equality. You see this in certain ideas of movement politics or more participatory parties that have tried to foster hands-on engagement. Participatory budgeting in parts of South America in the 2000s was one attempt to do this.

Insofar as the cultural sphere can create spaces of sociality that feed into this kind of political organising, that’s one pathway to nurture a more genuinely participatory community politics. It all starts with local organising. It always has. Local concerns – like housing, public spaces, or simply having somewhere to gather – are the kinds of ultra-local causes that nonetheless carry wider political significance. That is because if you build habits of people getting together and seeing each other in a more favourable light, that can slowly change how society works. One challenge of contemporary life is that we often see each other at our worst: online, in moments of anger or confrontation; on the street, as rushed individuals just trying to get by. What we have fewer occasions for is seeing each other as thinkers, as people willing to talk, deliberate, or act out of something other than self-interest.

Creating spaces where strangers can encounter each other in a more generous light – whether it’s a reading group, a cultural street event, or a music festival – is, in a way, a form of proto-political action. These experiences can reveal the stranger as someone who shares emotions you recognise and value, someone who appears as you’d hope to see yourself, rather than as you fear you are seen in daily life. So, building spaces can spill over into community and participation out of which real change might grow.

Artistic and cultural practices and experiences can also demonstrate what the decommodification of time, relationships, and, essentially, wellbeing and the “good life” can look and feel like. This can be a backbone of sustainable living, and ultimately strengthen the greening agenda.

The EU should also see itself as more than an engine of economic growth – as a community of citizens who share values and a future. Somewhat paradoxically, the rise of the far right shows there is genuine appetite for this.

Today, Europe faces a choice between further developing the EU as – in your words – “an individual consumer project”, or building it as a shared future and a true community project. How do you think the EU can respond to this crossroads?

To generate real solidarity, the EU must become much more assertive in addressing economic inequality and pursuing an egalitarian agenda around wealth distribution. True solidarity requires policies that confront deep economic divides within countries, not just between them. Yet EU mechanisms still mostly operate on the principle of transfers between richer and poorer member states, which misses the fact that the major inequalities run through societies, not only between them.

The EU should also see itself as more than an engine of economic growth – as a community of citizens who share values and a future. Somewhat paradoxically, the rise of the far right shows there is genuine appetite for this. Increasingly, far-right parties aren’t simply anti-European nationalists but are promoting an alternative vision of Europe; one that rejects technocracy and calculation in favour of a rhetoric of belonging, sacrifice, and deeper purpose.

Of course, the far right grounds this in narratives of cultural threat and hostility to migration, which are dangerous. But their success demonstrates that many people want a politics motivated by more than material abundance. The idea that there are things worth sacrificing for – something larger than profit or consumption – resonates widely. The challenge for other political movements today is to tap into this desire for meaning and shared purpose without reproducing the exclusionary politics of the far right.

There is an appetite for a different vision of European politics. The task is how to meet that appetite with an inclusive, democratic alternative.

This interview originally appeared in Culture Policy Room in July 2025. It is republished here with permission.

More than two decades in the making, the European Union’s trade deal with the Mercosur bloc has taken on renewed urgency in light of tensions with the US. Some within the EU see the agreement as environmentally destructive and a threat to the primary sector, but Europe needs to form more partnerships to strengthen its autonomy and resist commercial coercion.

“Apparently military, with political content and ultimately economic” was how Francisco Franco privately summed up the Madrid Pacts. The formula is counterintuitive but accurate: in 1953, after establishing military bases in Spain, the United States normalised relations with the dictatorship and began investing in an economy that had been ruinous until then. That economy would later take off thanks to this impulse and the National Stabilisation Plan. The visible part of the agreement was military; its political and economic dimensions were what enabled the regime’s survival.

A useful way to understand the European Union’s trade initiatives is by reversing this order of priorities. The web of treaties promoted by Brussels – with Mercosur (ratified), India (recently announced), Canada (2017), Japan (2019), and Australia (under negotiation) – is apparently economic, but has increasingly taken on political content. And although it lacks a military dimension, it seeks to strengthen European security.

None of this is secret. Supporters of these agreements highlight their value for the European Union’s strategic autonomy. They argue that the deals will help reduce risks not only in trade relations with China, but also with the United States. Less dependence – commercial and energy-related – means greater firmness vis-à-vis autocrats such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. Yet this fact is often overlooked in Europe’s public debate.

A stance that needs updating

This tendency is particularly pronounced among progressives. The Greens and the Left (GUE/NGL), largely voting alongside the far right in the European Parliament, have forced a judicial review of the EU-Mercosur¹ agreement, obstructing its entry into force. They argue that its impact on the environment and on Europe’s primary sector will be negative. With few exceptions,² these groups have barely engaged with other aspects of the agreement.

This position fits within a hostility toward free trade that dates back at least to the 1990s. The neoliberal “end of history” brought considerable destruction: rising inequality, the implosion of entire regions and economic sectors, crises, and the hypertrophy of the financial sector. This hyperglobalisation was never an emancipatory agenda, and the Left’s opposition to it was clearly justified.

Today, however, that stance needs updating. The main threat facing our societies is no longer deregulated globalisation (may it rest in peace), but coercion by powers such as the United States and Russia, combined with the worsening climate crisis. These two problems reinforce each other, because both Trumpism and its European offshoots oppose any kind of energy transition that would phase out our addiction to foreign gas and oil.

The main threat facing our societies is no longer deregulated globalisation, but coercion by powers such as the United States and Russia, combined with the worsening climate crisis.

In such a world, the agreements pursued by the European Union represent an attempt to build a different economic and diplomatic architecture, with clear legal foundations. The Mercosur agreement serves as an example. First, the contrast with previous trade treaties – including those from the Obama era, with their notorious ISDS clauses – deserves recognition. Although the agreement can be improved, it includes more demanding labour and environmental standards than those found in conventional free trade agreements.

It also represents a net contribution to economic and climate security. Mercosur members are among the world’s leading suppliers of critical minerals, which are indispensable for carrying out a rapid and just energy transition. Strengthening ties with the region is especially important at a time when the North American counteroffer consists of a mix of blackmail, violence, and extractivism.

A deeper trade relationship between Mercosur and the European Union also helps offset dependencies vis-à-vis China. At first glance, both Latin Americans and Europeans would benefit from a rapprochement with Beijing, necessary to counterbalance Washington’s hostility. In practice, however, Sino-American rivalry is not set in stone – at least in the short term. With a figure as erratic and prone to abrupt reversals as Trump, it is not unimaginable that the China-United States summit in April could produce a reconciliation between the two powers, marginalising Europe and Latin America. Given that the US National Security Strategy, released in December 2025, devotes more space to criticising the European Union than China, and frames hemispheric dominance (that is, over both Americas) as a priority objective, this possibility deserves to be taken seriously.

This is why the political content of European trade initiatives matters. Their common thread is the consolidation of a network of middle powers with autonomy on the international stage. This is not about forming an alliance against China, Russia, or the United States, but about acquiring the means and partners to mitigate commercial coercion and pressure from great powers. The objective should be to ensure that a scene like last summer’s never happens again, when European representatives went to Trump’s golf course in Scotland to flatter him and accept a humiliating tariff agreement.

Adapting in the face of crisis

That said, trade issues themselves do matter. The EU-Mercosur agreement will inevitably have distributive consequences. As for its allegedly harmful impact on the primary sector, it is important to note that this impact does not appear to be as severe as is sometimes claimed, nor has the regenerative, extensive, and local agriculture system championed by progressives been particularly favoured by the model that has actually existed in Europe so far. Protecting and developing such a sector would require public policies specifically designed for that purpose, as well as a profound reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.

These are important considerations, but largely external to the agreement itself. Moreover, the EU-Mercosur deal should not be read exclusively through the lens of the primary sector. Far from being a threat, it can benefit economies such as Spain’s, whose main exports – too often forgotten – are not agricultural products, but services and industrial manufactures.

The ability to adapt in the face of crises is an essential requirement for any ambitious political force with a genuine desire to transform reality.

In any case, initiatives of this kind should not be anathema if Latin American societies are truly considered, as leftists repeatedly insist, “sister peoples” of those on the Iberian Peninsula. Or if, beyond the usual slogans, there is a genuine desire to counterbalance the increasingly arbitrary and brutal role of the United States in the world. This does not mean that every trade agreement deserves uncritical celebration. But it does mean that it must be assessed using broader criteria than those applied so far.

Today, former central bankers such as Mark Carney (now Canada’s prime minister) or Mario Draghi speak of industrial and climate policy, or of developing economic security vis-à-vis the United States – concepts alien to the economic orthodoxy in which they were trained. If they are capable of adapting in this way, what prevents the Left from being flexible?

The ability to adapt in the face of crises, or to show tactical flexibility in pursuit of concrete strategies, is not synonymous with opportunism or capitulation. On the contrary, it is an essential requirement for any ambitious political force with a genuine desire to transform reality.

This article originally appeared in Spanish in Corriente Calida. It is republished here with permission.

1. The EU-Mercosur trade agreement involves all 27 member states of the European Union and the four founding members of the Mercosur trade bloc: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Bolivia joined the bloc in 2024, but is not part of the agreement. ︎
2. The five Volt Members of the European Parliament, who sit in the Green group, supported the deal. ︎

The US’s retreat from multilateralism should prompt the EU to establish new connections and strengthen its international presence, particularly in the Global South. But can this endeavour succeed without resulting in a form of neocolonialism? European action in the ­field of cultural relations serves as a positive model to build upon.

As we enter the post-American world order, the European Union must decide what its role in the emerging international system will be, and how it will balance its response to increasingly concerted efforts to spread illiberalism globally – including from within the EU itself – with its historic responsibility as the home of former colonising states. How can the EU respond to the American withdrawal from multilateralism and build coalitions to uphold human rights without engaging in a form of neocolonialism?

The EU’s global cultural and media action provides a path forward that can be extended to other forms of cooperation – particularly with the Global South.

The end of the American world order

The American retreat from multilateralism and international cooperation has created a space that China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal state actors have already begun to occupy. They aim to reinforce their image in the Global South as supporters of multilateralism, while at the same time delinking the idea of international cooperation from human rights, pluralism, and fairness. This risk alone should convince the European Commission, the Council, and the Parliament of the need to boost the EU’s global presence in response to Trump’s destructive foreign policy agenda.

To ­fight back against the increasingly coordinated strategy of illiberal actors – which, across Left and Right, are united by the aim to weaken democracies, oppose women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights, reduce cultural diversity, preclude global wealth taxes, and limit the bargaining power of the global majority – the EU must be bold. However, its efforts should avoid reinforcing a Eurocentric view of the world, which could be met with a rejection of liberal democratic principles (here understood as the combination of democratically elected governments, the rule of law, and human rights).

Instead, it is time for the EU to strengthen the role that it has gradually and implicitly begun to take on over the last decade in the cultural sphere, as a global enabler, a distributor of power, and a serious ally of the Global South.

To fight back against the increasingly coordinated strategy of illiberal actors, the EU must be bold.

A global cultural enabler

The role of the EU as a global enabler – not just in the sphere of culture – has legal basis in Article 3 of the Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union. It makes an explicit link between the protection of the Union’s citizens and global cooperation to ensure “peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as [to] the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter”.

This positions the EU as a global actor that must not be guided by its own self-interest alone. Of course, profound contradictions remain between these principles and some of the EU’s actions – for example, its migration policies, the watering down of climate efforts, extractivist initiatives, and the selective championing of human rights. While these realities must not be forgotten, we can build on a parallel set of positive EU actions, as exemplified by the quiet paradigmatic shift in global cultural and media action that has developed over the last decade.

This shift represents a significant transformation. Traditionally, the global cultural action of EU member states is aligned with cultural diplomacy – the efforts to extend cultural influence beyond the limits of a state, namely through activities led by national cultural institutes. These might range from a personal tour of a heritage site by a head of government to demonstrate generosity and open up new government-to-government engagement to cultural events or exhibitions showcasing a state’s culture and are done in support of a state’s foreign policy goals. For example, the French model of rayonnement culturel (“cultural radiance” or “influence”) is implemented by the branches of the Institut français and the Alliance française.

The European Union’s approach to culture in its foreign action is aligned with the British and German model of cultural relations¹ – a bottom-up, two-sided, collaborative model whose emergence in these two countries cannot be separated from their pasts as former colonisers and occupiers – and the recognition of the need to rebuild trust with foreign populations. The adoption of this model by the Union is consistent with the principles underlying the Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy, published in 2016, which identified ­five priorities for the EU’s global action: the security of the Union; state and social resilience to the East and South (into Central Asia and down to Central Africa); an integrated approach to conflicts and crises; cooperative regional orders; and global governance for the 21st century. The understanding of international relations and of the EU’s global role that was implicit in the document – reflecting the approach taken by Federica Mogherini (then High Representative for Foreign Affairs) – focused much more on collaboration and the development of long-term relationships than on security.

In the cultural relations paradigm, culture is understood as more than a means to open up conversations or increase the visibility and strength of a state in support of its foreign policy interests, as is often the case with cultural diplomacy. Instead, cultural relations understand culture as the catalyst for long-term and, crucially, equal relationship building.

The EU’s 2016 Joint Communication by the European Commission and the High Representative establishes the bloc’s foreign policy position on culture. Its rejection of the language of cultural diplomacy is highly significant. While it does not question the ability of member states to engage in cultural diplomacy, its emphasis is on strengthening ties among EU actors and reinforcing cooperation with partners – in other words, it accompanies and supplements the cultural diplomacy efforts of its member states.

Importantly, the joint communication also gives international cultural relations projects a clear structure: they are to be designed, implemented, and assessed in a collaborative manner by EU actors, the cultural institutes of EU member states, and local actors. A subsequent document drafted by the Council’s Cultural Affairs Committee and approved by the Foreign Affairs Council foregrounded the centrality of “cooperation of local stakeholders and civil society at all levels (planning, design, implementation) and on an equal footing, aiming at a bottom-up and people-to-people approach, local empowerment, participation and co-creation”.

In practice, the EU’s international cultural relations support and implement a wide range of initiatives. These range from those led by the EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) network, to activities funded by the Cultural Relations Platforms or by EU delegations around the world, to cultural projects initiated by the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) and other actors.

Although many limitations and paradoxes remain in the EU’s global action in the cultural and media spheres (such as persistent asymmetries of power, a super­ficial approach to cultural cooperation in some instances, and the EU’s continued tendency to support free trade norms at the expense of cultural diversity), the EU is beginning to emerge as a global enabler of cultural diversity around the world through trade agreements, policy arrangements and paradigms, financial measures, and modes of governance. To give three examples, the EU promotes cultural diversity in the Latin American audiovisual industry through the EU-funded Ibermedia programme, which involves regional stakeholders and receives input from multiple grassroots associations regarding its implementation. Through this policy arrangement, the EU supports cultural diversity not only from the top down but also from the bottom up. At the same time, through ACPCultures+, the largest audiovisual assistance initiative aimed at cultural workers in the Global South, the EU co-produced multiple African ­films in ways that, according to African ­film professionals, were central in their artistic and cultural endeavours and supported their local industries and communities. All ­films that received this fi­nancial support from the EU were shot in – and had casts from – ACP (African, Caribbean and Paci­c) countries.

The international cultural relations approach has been adopted by not only the EU and EU member states’ organisations but also non-EU cultural practitioners, leading to the gradual emergence of a global cultural network that places international cooperation and intercultural dialogue at the centre of its actions. Importantly, enabling cultural diversity requires a redistribution of power, that is, placing European actors and other interlocutors on an equal footing across projects, policy frameworks, and modes of work.

The EU versus the US and China

By design, cultural diplomacy serves the foreign policy interests of a state. The focus of international cultural relations is different: it lies in co-creation and relationship building rather than in the transmission of ideas through pre-established relations. But it would be insincere to pretend that it is disinterested.

Cultural diplomacy serves the foreign policy interests of a state. The focus of international cultural relations is different.

The question is not, then, whether the EU’s international cultural relations serve a purpose but, instead, what purpose they serve. The EU’s stance as an enabler of cultural diversity is in direct opposition to the ways other global powers understand the role of culture in international relations. Until Trump 2.0, the US aligned its international global action with soft power, a term coined by Joseph Nye in the 1990s. The idea was simple: in the context of the Cold War, culture – alongside policies and values – could attract foreign populations and win their hearts and minds. In so doing, it would support the geopolitical alignment of their countries with the US. Soft power was imagined as a new form of power that could be deployed alongside hard power – financial and military – to maintain American global hegemony. That is, soft and hard power worked as aligned pull-and-push forces – the carrot and the stick – to maintain American geopolitical dominance.

China has understood the importance of winning hearts and minds and decided to engage in similar efforts to challenge American domination. In the last decades, it invested significantly in a vast network of Confucius Institutes, and Xi Jinping has mentioned the importance of cultural relations and mutuality in multiple speeches. However, in doing so, China strips cultural relations of a politics of equality and delinks culture from human rights and pluralism. While the US co-opted culture to support its dominating role in global affairs, China co-opted the language of cultural relations to establish itself as an ally of multilateralism – an approach that some would describe as a rhetorical tactic that masks an interest in the establishment of a Chinese-led international order.

In both cases, be it using the language of soft power or cultural relations, and despite the fundamental differences between their regimes, America and China’s approaches instrumentalise culture to maintain or assert geopolitical dominance. Under Trump 2.0, however, soft power has been relegated to irrelevance – as revealed by the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the de facto dismantling of the US Agency for Global Media and, subsequently, of Voice of America. Nonetheless, this should not be understood as a denial of the importance of cultural elements in politics and international relations. The emphasis on limitless free speech that is shared by Trump’s administration and European far-right forces implicitly rejects the principles of pluralism and cultural diversity that are the core of the European project.

In response, the EU could build on its own work in the cultural and media spheres and begin to use its weight to redistribute power. It could redefine itself as a global diversity multiplier and coalition builder. It could recognise its privilege as a historical debt towards the Global South that gives it the responsibility to support the emergence of equal, inclusive, and fair international arrangements, institutions, and multilateral frameworks. This is aligned with calls for the EU to become a “consolidator of global partnerships” as a way “to give birth to a new multilateral order that can tread the path to sustainable peace and development”.

Using the EU’s privilege to reinforce Global South voices that have been hitherto silenced by their economic and trade dependencies on the US, China, or EU member states is the historically right course of action. At the same time, doing so would weaken the relative power of the US and China. Becoming a global enabler that uses its own power to redistribute power would not be easy – but it would serve the global common good rather than just the EU’s own interests.

Beyond great power realism

The idea of the EU as a global enabler of cultural diversity and global justice can push back against the great power realism that dominates geopolitics today. The late 20th century and beginning of the 21st century saw a shift away from a realist understanding of international relations, wherein states are in permanent conflict due to self-interests, towards a liberal school of thought that focuses on the shared benefi­ts of international cooperation and the development of global policy frameworks. The Russian occupation of Ukraine, Trump’s rejection of multilateralism, and NATO’s (and the EU’s) ongoing reinforcement of military capacity reflect a return of great power realism – as is also evident in the EU’s increasing emphasis on strategic autonomy and competitiveness.

The EU could build on its own work in the cultural and media spheres and begin to use its weight to redistribute power.

There is space for a different approach, one that, in alignment with the work of Global South thinkers such as Walter Mignolo, delinks power from domination and uses it not to control others but to reinforce them and their own power. Like the liberal school of international relations, this enabling approach would focus on the co-development of shared institutions that respond to common needs and reject zero-sum logics. However, unlike liberalism, which emphasises state sovereignty and has gradually transformed into a nonnormative and nonideological framework, this new approach would see diversity, mutuality, global justice, and a fair distribution of power as its ultimate goals. There is space for a global politics of allyship and abundance that rejects economic growth and competition for power as its main priorities and, instead, places vitality and regeneration – cultural, geopolitical, and environmental – at its centre. The EU can enable it.

Some might say that there is no desire for such a role among actors in the Global South. The evidence tells a different story. Cultural professionals from countries outside of the EU value its policy frameworks and call for further opportunities for equal collaboration with their European counterparts to strengthen and diversify their cultural ecosystems. The EU could accelerate this process by convening forums linking EU and non-EU citizens from countries whose global policies have been supportive of cultural diversity, such as South Africa and Brazil, to identify common needs and strategies and begin to imagine new international institutions and frameworks in the cultural sphere and beyond. The time is right.

1. For a summary of the processes explaining the adoption of this model by the European Union, see Mafalda Dâmaso & Andrew Murray (2021). “The EU’s Dualistic Regime of Cultural Diversity Management: The Concept of Culture in the Creative Europe Program (2014-2019; 2021-2027) and in the Strategy for International Cultural Relations (2016-)”. Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy, 7(1), pp. 153–184. Available at: <https://jcmcp.org/articles/the-eus-dualistic-regime-of-cultural-diversity-management/?lang=en> ︎

Immense power is being concentrated in the hands of Big Tech companies, who posit that their decisions around AI will shape the future of the world. But rather than accepting this undemocratic fate, a new narrative is needed – one that foregrounds AI as a public tool whose development and impact are not pre-determined.  

For centuries, Europe’s political imagination has been powered by a belief in progress – that tomorrow would be better than today. But this promise seems to be faltering. The geopolitical order is shifting, social inequality is deepening, ecological limits are being breached, and democratic rule is under strain. Against this backdrop, a question resurfaces: can liberal democracy still deliver on its promise of progress?

While some social thinkers warn of a loss of the possibility of progress or declare that loss is an unavoidable byproduct of modernity, others appear convinced that AI holds the key to reviving stagnant economies, taming the climate crisis, and even reconciling divided societies. It serves as the ultimate promise of collective salvation. 

Governments buy into the hype, with China and the US contesting a new “Tech Cold War”,and Britain’s prime minister Keir Starmer promising nothing short of “incredible change” as he prepares to “turbocharge AI”. Through the AI Continent Action Plan, EU Digital Commissioner Henna Virkkunen meanwhile aims to position Europe as a “global leader in Artificial Intelligence”.

These trends are hardly surprising as governments worldwide derive a considerable share of their political legitimacy from their ability to deliver on the promise of progress – and AI offers them a vehicle to do so. Yet behind this narrative of salvation lies a simple truth: the fantasy fueling today’s AI hype is written, packaged, and sold by a handful of big tech corporations.

AI futurism

In the current reality, according to Astrid Mager and Christian Katzenbach, technology companies “not only take over the imaginative power of shaping future society, but also partly absorb public institutions’ ability to govern these very futures with their rhetoric, technologies, and business models.” Or as Karen Hao puts it, AI companies colonise our future, claiming that “they alone are the ones with the scientific and moral clarity to bring people to heaven or else risk sending everyone to hell.” This discursive dynamic can be described as AI futurism. Coined by AI ethicist Paul Schütze, AI futurism describes the “hegemonic and (materially) institutionalised system of ideas and imaginaries [which] sustains the societal and individual perception of AI technologies.”

Central to AI futurism are three interrelated myths: that technology alone can solve our deepest problems (solutionism); that its advance is inevitable (determinism); and that it will ultimately surpass human intelligence (singularity). Influenced by libertarian and neo-reactionary ideologies, the AI futurist narrative reflects an inherently undemocratic belief system.¹ As these ideologies rebrand crises as engineering problems, they become tools of power: justifying monopolies, deregulation, and exploitative practices in the present, all in the name of an envisioned future.

Central to AI futurism are three interrelated myths: that technology alone can solve our deepest problems; that its advance is inevitable; and that it will ultimately surpass human intelligence.

Squeezed between empires

Despite their differences, the United States and China – the two global leaders in AI – both pursue development trajectories that exhibit AI futurist traits. Their trajectories, framed as technological progress in the service of human advancement, de facto enable the concentration of power in the hands of a few economic actors and their allied political coalitions. As it scrambles to catch up, Europe is increasingly in danger of blindly following this same path.

In the US, the dominant AI vision has, at least since the beginning of Trump’s second term, fused techno-futurist beliefs with right-authoritarian agendas. AI serves as a tool for dogmatic deregulation, dismantling the modern administrative state, and eroding democratic rights. At the same time, online platforms reshape online spaces according to a techno-libertarian worldview – one that treats technology as a force that should operate free from government oversight or social responsibility. This logic has proven highly compatible with authoritarian-populist communication, amplifying polarising content and weakening public accountability. A prime example of this dynamic is Trump’s international trade strategy, which seeks to protect the intellectual property rights of Big Tech nationally and abroad – for instance, through tariff threats – while platforms roll back content moderation and fact-checking.

China’s vision likewise echoes techno-futurist imaginaries. Here, innovation is centrally promoted as both an engine of growth and an instrument of social control. A key aim of the Chinese strategy is to demonstrate the ideological superiority of authoritarian rule and communist values through AI leadership.² Tech giants like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent function as extensions of state power – domestically, within surveillance architectures, and internationally, as vehicles of geopolitical influence. China’s long-term strategy of technological autonomy seeks full independence from Western technology and the export of its model through initiatives such as the “Digital Silk Road”. 

And Europe? What role does it claim for itself in the age of AI? The AI Continent Action Plan aims to position Europe as a leader in AI as well. Safeguards and regulation, as previously addressed by the 2024 EU AI Act, are no longer mentioned. Instead, the plan prioritises competitiveness, technological sovereignty, and European leadership. In other words, it seems to increasingly deprioritise core values such as data protection, democratic accountability, and social inclusion in favour of geopolitical ambition.

Pushed by industrial actors, such as the  EU AI Champions Initiative, this shift rests on the assumption that geo-economic competition is the defining logic of the digital age. While it may be so for profit-driven companies, thoughtlessly adopting the industry narrative is a political mistake. Reducing innovation strategy to competitiveness and growth imperatives neglects the political, social, and ecological dimensions essential to shaping AI in the public interest. Equally questionable is the oft-accompanying assumption that any kind of regulation hinders innovation. While there is no doubt that Europe needs strategic investment in digital sovereignty and competitive industry, blind deregulation is not only hostile to our democratic goals, it also doesn’t rise up to the task of making Europe resilient.

AI capitalism vs. proportionality

The discrepancy between the increasing adoption of AI futurism in Europe and real progress is most evident when viewed through the lens of socio-ecological crises.

The solutionist nature of the AI futurist approach depicts technological advancement as the central tool in a seamless transition to climate neutrality. AI can indeed contribute to optimising transport, monitoring emissions, and improving resource efficiency, through tools like smart grids that help bridge the gap between energy demand and renewable supply, or geodata-driven forecasting and risk assessments to support climate adaptation.

Yet AI technologies are currently failing to deliver on their promise of ecological progress. As Kate Crawford compellingly shows, AI is not simply lines of code or server clusters: it is much better conceptualised as a socio-material system, sustained by vast infrastructures of data, labour, and energy. It is algorithms encoding assumptions; it is platforms concentrating power; it is infrastructures demanding resources, extracted unevenly from the Global South. To call AI a “neutral tool” is to miss its essence.

To call AI a ‘neutral tool’ is to miss its essence.

In this context, “AI capitalism” refers to the structural entanglement of AI technologies with data-extractive business models, publicly subsidised infrastructure development, and financial market-driven logics of valorisation. AI innovations are not created in a vacuum, but emerge within extractive economic and institutional contexts that are primarily geared toward private sector interests and profit for the few. Their deployment is profoundly resource-hungry. Training large-scale models requires immense energy and rare materials, while generating growing streams of electronic waste. Such dynamics risk creating a “CO2 lock-in”, where AI infrastructures lock societies into unsustainable trajectories.³

Moreover, sustainability discourses often reflect priorities of the Global North, neglecting conceptual dimensions such as sufficiency or broader decolonial perspectives. And increased consumption can erode the efficiency gains that form a central pillar of the European climate strategy.⁴ In short, AI futurism dismisses today’s ecological costs by invoking a promised future where a superintelligent Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will supposedly solve the very crises its development exacerbates in the present.

As Aimee van Wynsberghe proposes, a path towards more sustainable AI development and deployment would be based on a principle of proportionality, requiring that AI’s ecological costs be justified in line with the public value it generates. Accordingly, developing robust models for ecological accounting and frameworks integrating both numerical and normative insights to establish an estimate of what counts as “proportional”  must be a future priority.

If AI continues to drive energy-hungry extractivism, it risks undermining the European Green Deal. But if its development is aligned with principles of sufficiency, care, and resilience, AI could contribute to socio-ecological transformation. But what are the political conditions to make a socio-ecological vision for AI possible?

From concentration to collective governance

The European Commission already posits that to help build a resilient Europe, people and businesses should be able to enjoy the benefits of AI while feeling safe and protected. However, this idea only holds true if AI doesn’t undermine both the conditions of a liveable future within planetary boundaries or our conditional ability to democratically shape this future. Instead of uncritically joining the global race for deregulation, Europe should move from concentration of compute and AI power towards fostering collective governance over AI’s path.

First, it must tackle power concentration by regulating markets and investing in commons. Effective antitrust enforcement⁵ combined with interoperability standards and open-source infrastructures is vital for digital sovereignty. Commons-based models such as Data Solidarity or the DECODE project in Barcelona demonstrate how data can be reclaimed as a public good with ecological and social benefits.

Europe should move from concentration of compute and AI power towards fostering collective governance over AI’s path.

Second, Europe has to rethink its innovation policy and move from market incentives to mission-oriented governance. Economist MarianaMazzucato reminds us that public investment has historically driven transformative breakthroughs, and that innovation policy should focus on broader societal goals, rather than short-term profits. Yet even the much-discussed Draghi Report fails to embed European investment policy in such a strategic vision. Rather than funnelling resources into AGI, public funds should support context-sensitive AI for decarbonisation, circular economies, and democratic resilience.

Governments can redirect AI innovation by tying public funding to socially and ecologically aligned missions – a strategy Carsten Jung calls AI directionism (as opposed to accelerationism). Using the UK as an example, Jung demonstrates that only one out of seven AI companies focuses on solving a specific problem, yet approximately one out of five companies receives public funding​​. This offers the government an opportunity to strategically steer the sector through targeted allocation of contracts and funding, and to give it a clear orientation, for example towards socio-ecological standards.

Third, public alternatives need to be built. Models for such a quest are provided by Mozilla Foundation, which calls for the creation of a non-commercial AI ecosystem that promotes public goods, ensures democratic access, and provides a counterweight to the dominance of private AI companies. Others suggest a democratically governed AI stack of public compute, open data, and open models, which rather than suppressing private innovation, aims to rebalance ecosystems toward the common good. It is clear that a thorough evaluation is necessary to identify the areas of society where strategic vulnerabilities exist and where political priorities must be set, such as in sectors handling highly sensitive data (for example, healthcare) or in areas where decisions influence individuals’ ability to exercise their civic rights, experience political efficacy, and ultimately realise their broader life opportunities (for instance, the public sector).

Fourth, democratisation needs to be understood and embedded as a cross-cutting task. AI risks reshaping representation, communication, and participation in exclusionary ways if left unchecked. Yet projects like Amsterdam’s Responsible AI approach illustrate how openness, transparency, and citizen involvement can foster experiments in both building state capacity and gaining public trust. Models such as Helsinki’s AI-based public service delivery and Taiwan’s digital democracy approaches already showcase how AI can be used for the common good.

For AI to serve the public good, it must be governed through genuinely democratic processes, not treated as a purely technical domain. Yet current debates often neglect this fact, approaching technology governance as an afterthought rather than as the foundation of social benefit. The democratisation of AI means going beyond imparting merely instrumental knowledge (know-how or technical competence; digital literacy). It requires reflexive knowledge, or know-why – in other words, an understanding of the underlying implications and logic of AI. But above all, it requires transformative knowledge, or know-what, which relates to design options, desirable futures for society, and the inherently political dimensions of AI.

In practice, the democratisation of AI further requires the state to create the institutional conditions that allow democratic intermediaries to meaningfully influence how AI systems are designed, procured, and governed. This entails building transparency over funding priorities, procurement processes, and data-sharing agreements. Yet transparency is meaningless without the structures and resources that allow civil society to participate and exercise democratic oversight before decisions are finalised.

Lastly, democratic progress builds on collective action. The dominance of AI futurism and deregulatory agendas, mirrored in the EU Simplification Agenda, erodes the democratic capacity to steer technology. AI must be understood and treated as “normal technology” in the sense that its diffusion and impacts are shaped more by the social, political, and institutional contexts in which it is embedded than by the pace of technological innovation itself.

As Mazzucato insists, innovation is political and regulation must be reclaimed as a tool of collective shaping. AI is not an autonomous, world-altering force, but a bundle of technologies whose very real effects are determined by how societies choose to develop and embed it. In the current geopolitical climate, new democratic alliances must be forged to institutionalise co-creative, commons-oriented AI governance – both among the trifecta of state, civil society, and transformative businesses, and across borders with like-minded actors such as Canada, Japan, and South Korea.

Innovation is political and regulation must be reclaimed as a tool of collective shaping.

Keeping futures plural

In the 1990s, French philosopher Paul Virilio coined the term “racing standstill” to describe the dizzying speed of “progress” that goes nowhere. Today, AI futurism manifests this idea. 

AI risks becoming a progress trap. While it concentrates power, it doesn’t build homes, draw down carbon emissions, or generate the genuinely novel ideas needed for transformative change. The danger lies less in AI’s utility, which is real, than in the misguided visions projected onto it. When these inflated expectations collapse, the resulting disillusionment profits only the authoritarian-populist narratives that exploit feelings of loss and nostalgia.

The challenge, therefore, is not to abandon progress but to reclaim and redefine it. As sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf contended, the goal of a progressive society is to expand people’s life chances – their opportunities to shape their own lives and fulfil their potential.   Philosopher Rainer Forst further argues that only those processes can be considered progress that empower those affected by them to “autonomously determine in which direction their society should develop”. Translated into political governance, these ideas converge on a fundamental task: preserving the capacity for self-determined change. We should avoid dependencies, dead ends, or situations portrayed as having no alternatives, as these conditions undermine the possibility of democratic stewardship.

The fundamental characteristic of progressive governance, therefore, lies in consistently strengthening a society’s capacity to change. The development and governance of AI can only be called progressive if they empower people themselves to shape and justify how technology transforms their society. It also entails safeguarding against dynamics – such as polarisation and inequality – that undermine social cohesion and, consequently, people’s ability to organise collectively. In Europe’s current political climate, this implies resisting deregulatory agendas and investing in political institutions capable of translating abstract democratic values into actionable concepts. It means regulating algorithms that make social platforms divisive, rather than spaces for deliberation. It means building environments where new ideas can emerge and democratically controlled infrastructures are in place to support their realisation, while clear benchmarks for purpose and proportionality steer technological innovation to the fulfilment of broader socio-ecological goals, safeguarding the openness of the future.

We must engage in a deliberate act of political imagination: to recognise that AI’s path is not predetermined by Big Tech, but is contested terrain – a technology that can either concentrate power or strengthen democracy, accelerate ecological collapse or support sustainability. Which path prevails will be determined by the collective choices we make about governance, ownership, and purpose.

1. Gebru, T., & Torres, É. P. (2024). The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence. First Monday, 29(4). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636/11599  ︎
2. Jinghan Zeng (2022). Artificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics: National Strategy, Security and Authoritarian Governance. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ︎
3. Scott Robbins & Aimee van Wynsberghe (2022). “Our New Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure: Becoming Locked into an Unsustainable Future.” Sustainability, 14(8), Article 4829. ︎
4. ^[4] Anne-Laure Ligozat, Julien Lefèvre, Aurélie Bugeau & Jacques Combaz (2022). “Unraveling the Hidden Environmental Impacts of AI Solutions for Environment: Life Cycle Assessment of AI Solutions.” Sustainability, 14(9), Article 5172. ︎
5. Friederike Rohde, Maike Gossen, Josephin Wagner & Tilman Santarius (2021). “Sustainability challenges of Artificial Intelligence and policy implications.” Ökologisches Wirtschaften, 36(O1), pp. 36–40. ︎

In the new European Parliament, Greens will be a more diverse yet ideologically coherent group. Though their ranks are smaller, they can be a reliable partner to build a solid pro-European majority. But they should use their strategic weight wisely, retaining their role as a progressive force pushing for change.

If we forgot everything that has happened in European politics over the past five years and just looked at the results of the European elections, we would conclude that not much has changed. The grand coalition of the centre-right European People’s Party, Socialists, and Liberals went from 59 to 56 per cent of the seats in the European Parliament – an overall loss of 43 seats. This is not a major drop, especially in light of the departure of the 27 British labour and liberal-democratic MEPs due to Brexit, and the exit from their respective parliamentary groups of Hungary’s Fidesz (13 MEPs) and Slovakia’s Smer (3 MEPs) due to their radicalisation. The forces to the left of the grand coalition – Greens, Left, and left-wing independents – went from 18 to 17 per cent of the seats, and those to the right – ECR, ID and right-wing independents – increased their representation from 23 to 27 per cent of the parliament compared to 2019.

The changes brought about by these elections are more in terms of substance than of numbers. The radical right has been normalised, the mainstream right has radicalised itself, progressive forces have lost radicality, and a new nationalistic, anti-establishment, and anti-immigration left has gained representation. 

A significant challenge to the status quo of European politics would be the formation of two new nationalist, extremist, pro-Russian, German-led groups in the European Parliament: one on the left, headed by Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW (together with Italy’s Five Star Movement and Slovakia’s Smer), and one on the right, led by Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). 23 MEPs from at least seven member states are needed to form a parliamentary group. If these groups were to materialise (something that is far from certain, especially on the left), they would contribute to normalising the established far right – the ECR and ID Groups – by making it appear less extreme. Worse, they would further radicalise the migration and peace debates in the European Parliament.  

The new Green group 

While the vote share of far-right parties did not increase to the extent that some feared, the elections did not go well for progressives. The Greens in particular lost 22 MEPs compared to 2019: nine in Germany, five in France, two in Ireland, one in Belgium, and seven in Britain due to Brexit.  

The Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament seems likely to return to 2014 numbers, making up around 7 per cent of the seats. This is not only due to the results of the Greens but also of their allies in the group: the European Free Alliance lost four MEPs, and the European Pirate Party. The group’s numbers could still change as negotiations with independent parties and elected MEPs are ongoing. Importantly, the five MEPs elected with Volt Europa have yet to decide which group to join.

Brexit aside, the Greens’ losses in these European elections are mainly due to their result in France and Germany. In France, the polarisation between Macron and Le Pen’s supporters, as well as the infighting of the Left, has played against the Greens. On the progressive front, fragmentation was visible not so much in the absence of a common list for the European elections, but mainly in the lack of the parties’ mutual recognition as part of the same political bloc. This benefited Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and Raphaël Glucksman’s PS-PP list, the largest and more polarising forces in the left camp. This disunity has so clearly damaged the French Left that a few days after the European elections, progressives formed a “nouveau front populaire” for the upcoming snap legislative ballot. 

In Germany, the Greens’ electoral performance is in line with those of other Green parties that are part of national coalition governments, such as in Belgium and Ireland. In these countries, Greens have not been able to prove to their voters that they have achieved enough positive change to justify being in government. In Germany, voters punished not just the Greens but also their partners in the “traffic light” coalition, the centre-left SPD and the neoliberal FDP. 

In the new term, the Greens will be numerically weaker but more diverse and representative of Europe’s complexity.

As a result, the new Green group in the European Parliament will be one of the least German, least Franco-German, and least Western European Green groups ever. But also one of the most Nordic, Southern, and Eastern European – all at the same time. Finally, the group is likely to be more “purely” Green compared to the previous term: apart from three EFA MEPs, one Pirate, and two independents (and pending the decision of the five Volt MEPs), all its MEPs are members of the European Greens. 

The Greens/EFA Group has traditionally been the most united in the European Parliament. Green negotiators can usually count on the vast majority of their group to back their decisions. This is unlikely to change in the new Parliament: despite its increased geographic diversity, the group is set to remain ideologically coherent. The German Greens might oppose a strong condemnation of Israel, the Italian Greens may vote against military support to Ukraine, and the Lithuanian Democrats could refuse to back more humane drug laws, but these are expected to remain minority positions within the group.  

Across Eastern Europe, the Greens have managed to establish solid national parties that have won seats in both the European and national parliaments, and are now strong progressive voices. In Slovenia, Lithuania, Croatia, and Latvia, Greens have elected new MEPs by focusing their campaign on climate and social messaging, presenting themselves as credible progressive alternatives to the status quo. In Denmark and Sweden, the Greens’ strong opposition to far-right policies – whether pushed through by the far right or by radicalised “centrist” forces – brought them historic results. In Italy and the Netherlands, the results of progressive green-left alliances exceeded expectations. 

New reality 

In the new term, the Greens will be numerically weaker but more diverse and representative of Europe’s complexity. Most importantly, they will be more relevant than ever to build majorities in the European Parliament. What they have achieved in European politics since 2019 is notable, but it is not irreversible. In the second part of the previous term, the EPP started backtracking on climate policies and reaching out to its right. This radicalisation of the centre right will not disappear, but if the grand coalition of EPP, Socialists, and Liberals wants a stable pro-European majority, it will have to rely on the Greens.  

Greens will have to use their strategic weight wisely. Working towards compromise and being a reliable partner of the new majority is a positive role to play, but standing up for human rights and the climate is equally important. For this reason, they should draw clear red lines for cooperation with the majority coalition. The election results show that voters across Europe still see them as a credible alternative to the status quo, especially when they push for progressive change. 

A more influential far right in the European Parliament could try to put the brakes on EU enlargement. In Georgia, the ruling party has pushed through a controversial law on “foreign agents”, but citizens remain overwhelmingly in favour of EU integration. Continued support from European institutions is crucial for the country’s European aspirations. 

The outcome of European elections could prompt a shift in EU policymaking. While the EU’s traditional powerhouses, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), retained their status as the bloc’s largest parliamentary groups, the far right grew. Both the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the even more radical Identity and Democracy (ID) gained seats compared to the 2019 elections. 

There are concerns that ID and ECR, despite their policy differences, might merge into a supergroup. Even if they don’t join forces, they could coordinate and collaborate on common issues, in the process forming an ideological bulwark against the EU’s foundational values. A key one of these could be the European Union’s enlargement, a cornerstone of the bloc’s foreign agenda in the last years, and a process towards which far-right parties are less open.  

Currently, nine countries hold EU candidate status: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, and Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought new urgency to EU enlargement, seen as a geopolitical strategy to ensure long-term regional security. Prior to the war, the accession process was ongoing on paper but mostly stalling.  

Things are moving slowly for most Western Balkan candidate states, where the EU feels less geopolitical pressure, and where leaders, like Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, have sought ways to keep ties with both the EU and Russia. Western Balkan countries could grow impatient if accession proceeds rapidly for Ukraine and Moldova alone, or stalls altogether in the new European Parliament.  

Many far-right parties that gained ground in the European Parliament oppose EU enlargement due to financial costs associated with both pre- and post-accession processes, as well as the prospect of increased migration flows. When far-right actors do support the accession of specific countries, they are often driven by narrow national interests or an emphasis on historical ties and cultural proximity. For example, Poland’s Law and Justice party perceives Ukraine’s accession as vital for Polish security, while Romania’s AUR considers Moldova an integral part of Romanian territory. 

The well-documented affinity for Russia among parts of the far right could also sway their actions within the Parliament, particularly in regard to countries whom Moscow considers to be within its “sphere of influence” pursuing EU membership. The impact of their anti-enlargement positions could extend beyond efforts to block the ratification of accession treaties during the Parliament’s qualified majority vote at the end of negotiations: far-right parties may also seek to undermine support for resolutions promoting democratic processes and rule of law in these countries, or impede the work of parliamentary committees tasked with bolstering democratic reforms in aspiring member states. 

Georgia: A nation at a crossroads  

One country that could bear the brunt of shifting EU power dynamics is Georgia, which obtained candidate status in December 2023. Compared to Moldova and Ukraine, Tbilisi lacks a strong advocate for its EU integration among member states. A further obstacle on Georgia’s EU path is a controversial “foreign agents” law reminiscent of Russian authoritarianism. 

The law, pushed through by the ruling Georgian Dream party, requires non-profit organisations and media outlets receiving more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as bodies “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” The party’s supermajority of 90 MPs in the 150-seat parliament allowed them to override a presidential veto against it. The law’s passage also defied peaceful demonstrations by thousands of Georgians. According to a 2023 poll, 89 per cent of Georgian citizens support EU membership. 

The ruling party’s stance on Russia is ambiguous. Its founder, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who amassed his fortune in Russia, has prioritised normalising relations with Moscow, a position manifested in the party’s abstention from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This stance is particularly jarring given Russia’s occupation of Georgia’s territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since 2008, which Moscow continues to exploit to destabilise the country and thwart its EU and NATO aspirations. Paradoxically, however, Georgia remains largely aligned with the Western-imposed sanctions against Russia. 

An explanation for this ambiguous approach lies in the Georgian leadership’s belief that insufficient Western military support has failed to halt Russia’s advance, with Moscow now controlling large parts of Ukraine and the balance of power shifting in its favour. This fuels concerns in Tbilisi over whether the West would provide adequate support if Russia attacked Georgia. As many Georgian officials see it, NATO’s eastward expansion was what provoked Moscow’s invasion.  

Simultaneously, the conflict in Ukraine has heightened Georgia’s geopolitical importance, as most of the EU’s critical energy routes bypassing Russia converge on the small Caucasus nation. Russia has not overlooked this strategic value. In 2023, Moscow made overtures to Tbilisi by lifting visa requirements for Georgian citizens and reopening air links – concessions that provide Georgia greater room to manoeuvre its relationships with both the EU and Russia. 

Champion of democratic values  

The European Parliament has been a supportive force for Georgian protesters’ efforts against the “foreign agents” law. Its president, Roberta Metsola, wrote in a post on social media platform X: “Tbilisi, we hear you! We see you!” emphasising that Georgian protestors desire a “European future.” 

It also passed a resolution in April condemning the law as incompatible with “EU values and democratic principles, running against Georgia’s ambitions for EU membership,” and stating that it damaged the country’s international reputation. The resolution also stressed that Georgia’s accession negotiations “should not be opened as long as this law is part of Georgia’s legal order.” 

Although the Georgian government still passed the law, the resolution shows the Georgian people that they are not alone in their struggle, and that they are being heard – not by their government, but by the Union that many of them so badly wish to join. It provides an impulse to keep protesting and demand change. These types of actions elevate the European Parliament from a passive bystander to an active champion of democratic values in Georgia and a contributor to progressive discussions in the candidate country.  

This is not the first resolution supporting Georgian rule of law and democracy. In 2022, the Parliament passed a resolution condemning the “increasing number of cases of intimidation, threats, violence, and the persecution of journalists.” It urged Georgian authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible for violent attacks on journalists and to protect media freedom. 

Beyond this, the European Parliament directly engages with Georgia through dedicated committees focused on issues of concern in the candidate country. A prime example is the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee, which convenes twice a year. Comprising members of the European Parliament and Georgian parliamentarians, it focuses on tackling shared EU-Georgia concerns and overseeing the implementation of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, which fosters crucial democratic reforms in the country. The European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the South Caucasus (DSCA) monitors the Committee’s work. 

A gathering storm 

In the coming months, the EU’s support for Georgia and other candidate countries might significantly diminish because it is contested by far-right forces. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which won over 30 per cent of the EU vote in France, has framed enlargement as a threat to member states’ sovereignty. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, RN opposed granting candidate status to the six nations in the EU’s Eastern Partnership, which includes Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. RN also associates EU enlargement with an influx of migrants into France, propelling the narrative that immigration threatens French citizens due to issues like unemployment.  

Like other parties in the ID parliamentary group, RN maintains a pro-Russia stance and ties with Moscow. In 2014, a 6 million euro loan from a Russian bank helped rescue the party from the brink of bankruptcy. Ahead of the European elections this year, RN’s leadership moved to address the potential fallout from this Russian connection by repaying the debt.  

While condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Marine Le Pen has advocated for closer ties with the country on issues like counterterrorism. She has also called for sanctions against it to be lifted, claiming they serve no purpose and only make Europeans, including the French, suffer. 

Other far-right parties, like Austria’s FPO, also argue against EU enlargement due to costs. They claim that investments in new member states threaten the Union’s economic balance, as these countries typically receive substantial EU funds while contributing little during their initial accession phase. The FPO was the big winner of EU elections in Austria, with almost 26 per cent of the vote.  

Divisions within the far-right 

Despite signs of collaboration between European far-right parties, there are also significant divisions. Ahead of the elections, the ID group decided to exclude Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from its ranks following scandals involving its candidates. These scandals include lead candidate Maximilian Krah stating that not every member of the Nazi SS was automatically a criminal. (The AfD still won 16 per cent of the vote in Germany). The German party has ousted Krah from its EU delegation and is seeking ways to re-enter ID, which would boost the group’s numbers.  

EU enlargement itself might cause divergence, with some far-right parties supporting the accession of certain candidate countries, and others opposing it altogether. Ukraine’s accession could become an especially contentious point between ECR and the more hardline ID. Many ECR parties, like Poland’s PiS and Brothers of Italy, have adopted a more supportive Ukraine stance, making them appear more palatable interlocutors for traditional parties. If ECR forces become part of the Council’s majority, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested before the elections, it could have significant knock-on effects for enlargement.  

There is also the possibility that parts of the EPP might turn against enlargement. The financial burden of enlargement could serve as a unifying factor that transcends ideological divides, particularly given the economic hardships many member states are experiencing. According to a 2023 internal Council note, the EU would need to allocate around 186 billion euros over seven years for Ukraine alone. Including the six candidate countries, as well as Georgia and Moldova, would require an additional 74 billion euros.  

Parliamentary reform efforts  

In an effort to address some of these foreseeable challenges, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in early 2024 aimed at making the enlargement process more efficient and sustainable. The resolution supported the gradual integration of candidate countries into the single market during the accession process to ensure that the EU can absorb new members without excessive financial and migration strain. 

It also proposed replacing the Council’s unanimous voting requirement with qualified majority voting, aiming for a more flexible and streamlined enlargement process. This proposal anticipated the likely rise of far-right parties in some EU governments, which could also be reflected in the Council’s composition, making unanimous consensus increasingly elusive. 

While the European Parliament’s contribution to a successful and realistic EU enlargement strategy is invaluable, proposals that seek to reconcile the Union’s foundational values with the harsh political and economic realities of the present day are likely to become increasingly rare in the coming years, as the Union confronts a perfect storm of populism and economic insecurity. 

For candidate countries like Georgia, striving to maintain their EU trajectory amid this turbulent landscape, the road ahead appears arduous and uncertain. As they also grapple with internal turmoil and faltering democratic reforms, their hopes of EU membership could become a casualty of the continent’s deepening political fragmentation – a sobering prospect that underscores the urgent need for resilience, unity, and an unwavering commitment to the guiding values of the European project. 

The chances of a conservative majority after the European elections are slim, but the normalisation of radical-right forces is a wake-up call for progressives.

Between 6 and 9 June, 720 citizens of Europe will be elected to the world’s only continental democratic assembly. As the vote is set to result in a fragmented European Parliament, many in Brussels and around the continent are already thinking about the day after, speculating on which forces will build a governing majority.  

The European Union is, like most decentralised democracies, a two-chamber system: one chamber represents the member states and one the citizens – the European Council and the European Parliament, respectively. To win a second term as European Commission President, Ursula Von der Leyen – or anyone who aims to succeed her –  will need a double majority: in the European Council, which nominates the candidate for the EU’s top job, and in the European Parliament, which needs to elect the nominee. 

Over the past decades, all Commission presidents have been elected and supported by a grand coalition of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the European Socialists, and the Liberals (now called Renew Europe). This political formula has historically granted a majority in both chambers. But there is talk that this will no longer be the case after the June elections. 

The big story of the election is expected to be the rise of the radical right, which seems set to obtain its best result ever. The growth of the far right in the European Parliament would be a consequence of two elements that have fuelled each other in the last years: the social unrest and dissatisfaction linked to multiple crises (the climate emergency, the pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine) and the normalisation of far-right rhetoric by both the mainstream Right and the media.

According to polls, far-right forces could win 28 per cent of the seats, up from 22 per cent in the current Parliament. They also hold three seats in the European Council: Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Petr Fiala in the Czech Republic, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.  

While the rise of the radical right is a worrying sign for European democracy 79 years after the defeat of Nazi-fascism, these forces have grown into an actor that cannot be ignored in EU policymaking. However, based on the numbers, chances that the far right will be part of the new EU majority after the European elections are slim.  

Far-right normalisation  

Of Europe’s radical-right parties, around half have been normalised as mainstream political forces. Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, Fidesz in Hungary and the ODS in Czechia run their respective countries in coalition with the EPP.  

The other half are still behind a “cordon sanitaire”, or are regarded as not democratically acceptable. The largest party in this group is Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) in France. Even though the RN’s normalisation seems underway, it is very unlikely that Emmanuel Macron will support a European Commission that opens its doors to his main political rival.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is polling around 20 per cent in Germany, is more isolated. Not only Von der Leyen’s German party, the CDU, has repeatedly ruled out cooperating with the AfD, but even radical-right leaders such as Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini have distanced themselves from it. Last week, their group in the European Parliament, Identity and Democracy, expelled the AfD following a series of scandals involving its top candidate, Maximilian Krah. By distancing themselves from the AfD, Salvini and Le Pen aim to draw a demarcation line within the radical right between “cordoned off” and “acceptables”, and present themselves as ready for government. 

This means that while the radical right might win almost one-third of the seats in the EU Parliament, only half of these can be counted on for a right-wing governing majority. 

Building a majority that includes the far right is difficult for other reasons too. A minority of EPP and Renew member parties, such as the Social Democratic Party in Portugal, the Centerpartiet in Sweden, and Gibanje Svoboda in Slovenia, have stood against alliances with radical right forces at the national level, and are opposed to collaboration at the European level. 

If progressives want to remain relevant, cooperation and coordination between them, which has been rarely seen since the eurozone crisis, should become the norm. 

The most realistic scenario is thus another grand coalition of EPP, Socialists, and Liberals. This formula should guarantee a majority in the European Parliament. As for the European Council, a majority that includes Meloni, Fiala, and potentially even Orbán would likely cause limited backlash. Such an arrangement would be nothing new: in 2019, Poland’s PiS and Hungary’s Fidesz were needed to build a majority in the European Council.  

Since the Socialists have been clear in their refusal to participate in any parliamentary coalition with the right-wing ECR, the only mathematical alternative would be for the Greens to join the grand coalition. This would deliver a stable majority in the Parliament, but not in the European Council. Plus, to bring the Greens on board, Von der Leyen or her successor would need to backtrack on the anti-green narratives the EPP has embraced in the last year. 

The progressive side 

Once upon a time, the Socialists led Europe. This year, they are expected to win less than 20 per cent of seats in the new European Parliament. Together with the Greens, the Left, and the more social-liberal side of Renew, they could make up close to 40 per cent of the assembly – a new historic low. 

These projections are a wake-up call to the progressives of Europe. If they want to remain relevant, cooperation and coordination between them, which has been rarely seen since the eurozone crisis, should become the norm. 

The Left Group in particular is faced with the biggest historical challenge since the split in 1989 between pro-Soviets and Eurocommunists. After Brexit, a part of the European Left gave up its Euroscepticism and moved into the pro-European reformist camp. Some leftist forces entered ruling majorities in various EU member states: Syriza led the Greek government between 2015 and 2019, Portugal’s Bloco and Spain’s Sumar and Izquierda Unida have been part of progressive government alliances. Meanwhile, Ireland’s Sinn Fein and the Basque Country’s EH Bildu have moderated their stances and established themselves as real political alternatives. Others, namely the Nordic Left, have kept their Euroscepticism but acted constructively. 

At the same time, other sectors of the Left have further radicalised, especially on migration issues and in defence of Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine. Sahra Wagenknecht, a veteran of German left-wing politics, has broken away from Die Linke to launch her own socially conservative, anti-immigration, Kremlin-sympathetic party. In Belgium, the Marxist and socialist PTB still refuses to take part in any governing majority. Spain’s Podemos, after leaving government in December 2023, reinvented itself as a loud anti-Ukraine voice.  

To counter the mainstreaming of the far right and the radicalisation of parts of the Left, progressive forces that share commitments to democracy and human rights need to find unity in fragmentation and form alliances at national and European level. 

Since it was introduced a decade ago, the choice of the “Spitzenkandidaten” for the Commission presidency ahead of the EU elections has often been characterised as both technocratic and pointless. But the EU is no absolute monarchy: in democracy, choices are made through political compromise.

In the era of social media and infotainment, every political battle is narrated as a final reckoning that will either solve all problems or end the world. EU democracy, of course, is not immune to this maximalism. A good example of this trend is the debate surrounding the lead candidate process, through which European political parties nominate their contenders for the Commission presidency ahead of the EU elections. In 2019, when Ursula von der Leyen got the EU’s top job instead of Manfred Weber, the chosen candidate of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the entire process was pronounced dead. 

And yet, five years later, it is alive and well. The Socialists have recently nominated Commissioner Nicolas Schmit; the Greens have elected their lead candidate duo, MEPs Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout; the Liberals and the Left are expected to make their choice soon; and the EPP will likely support Ursula von der Leyen for a second mandate. In the next months, lead candidates will campaign all over Europe on an electoral manifesto that unites their political family. 

Clearly, the lead candidate process was more resilient than some expected. But is it also democratic?  

Longstanding scepticism 

Most states in the EU are based on parliamentarism, meaning that the parliament is at the centre of politics. The head of state – a president or a monarch – has restricted powers, and the government derives its democratic legitimacy from the parliament. 

In parliamentary systems within the EU, heads of government (whether they are called prime minister, minister-president, president of the government or of the council of minister, chancellor, or taoiseach) are not elected into office directly by “the people”, but appointed by the head of state,  usually after consulting the parliament. 

The European Union is also a parliamentary system. The Commission president is the head of government, commissioners are the equivalent of government ministers, and the powers of the head of state lie with the European Council, which brings together the 27 national leaders. 

That the names and roles of these institutions are sometimes confusing is not by chance. As with many things in European politics, the current institutional set-up is the result of compromise between those who wanted to build a European democracy and those, led by always-eurosceptic Britain, who preferred a European technocracy under the control of national powers. For every step that brought us closer to a more complete European democracy, the advocates of national sovereignty made sure to make the process more difficult to understand. Yes, Europe could have its own government, but it would be called a Commission and have limited authority. Sure, Europe could have its elected parliament, but without the power to directly initiate legislation. 

For every step that brought us closer to a more complete European democracy, the advocates of national sovereignty made sure to make the process more difficult to understand.

When it comes to the election of the European Commission president, however, the process is in all respects similar to its national equivalent: EU citizens vote in the European elections, the European Council proposes a candidate based on the result, and then the European Parliament approves it. 

In 2014 something changed. The lead candidate system was introduced to establish a clearer link between national parties of the same European political family, EU elections, and EU institutions. European-level political parties announced their candidates for President of the European Commission ahead of the vote and sent them campaigning across Europe.  

The EPP and the Socialists selected Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz as their lead candidates. Smaller parties like the Liberals, Greens, and Left also chose their contenders. The EPP won the election, the main political parties agreed on a new grand coalition, and Juncker became President of the Commission. The process was repeated in 2019 with Manfred Weber (EPP) and Frans Timmermans (Socialists) as the top contenders for the presidency. The Liberals, Greens, Left and now also Conservatives followed suit with their nominees. Eventually, the EPP’s von der Leyen got the job, and obituaries for the whole process started to appear.  

The process had been surrounded by scepticism even before 2019. Once again, language was part of the problem: many in the EU bubble and national media circles use the German “Spitzenkandidat” instead of the equivalent in their respective European language – lead candidate, candidat tête de liste, capolista, candidato principal, czołowy kandydat, and so on. This contributed to making the process sound complicated and inaccessible to EU voters. 

In 2019, what brought von der Leyen to the helm of the Commission was not the failure of the process, but democratic parliamentarism in action. Unlike his predecessor, Weber was incapable of uniting a majority around him. Socialists and Liberals, and even parts of his own political family, did not trust him to become Commission president. This, together with the fact that the EPP had won the elections and that the Socialists refused to work towards finding an alternative majority, meant that the EPP was forced to find a different candidate. 

Something similar had happened in Italy after the 2013 and 2018 elections. In both cases, the lead candidates of the parties that won the elections – the centre-left’s Pier Luigi Bersani and Luigi di Maio of the Five Star Movement, respectively – did not find a majority to form a government, leading to Enrico Letta and Giuseppe Conte becoming prime ministers. Italian democracy did not end because of this, and neither did European democracy in 2019. 

Democracy in progress 

Since 1979, when the first European elections took place, European democracy has evolved in small steps. The lead candidate system is one of them, and it will continue working as it has done for more than a decade. 

To prepare for enlargement in the Western Balkans and further east in the next decade, the EU needs to strengthen its democratic achievements and become more reflective of its diversity.

Just like national democracies, European democracy is still flawed. EU election campaigns are nationally minded, European political parties do not get enough media attention, and their internal processes for choosing lead candidates are often untransparent or not representative of the Union’s diversity. The fact that most lead candidates for June’s elections come from either Germany or the Benelux (as was the case in previous elections too) shows that the process is controlled by party elites. 

For 2024, the die is cast. But to prepare for enlargement in the Western Balkans and further east in the next decade, the EU needs to strengthen its democratic achievements and become more reflective of its diversity. As Altiero Spinelli said, totalitarianism is not the outcome of an incurable disease, but of an organism that renounces to defend itself. A healthy European democracy is the strongest guarantee against resurging nationalism and geopolitical turmoil.

Developments in southern Europe will influence the EU’s political trajectory in the years to come. If progressives are to challenge the Right’s dominance in Italy and Greece, they need to find unity in fragmentation, following the examples of Spain and Portugal.

In the big picture of European politics, Spain and Italy couldn’t be further away from each other. In Spain, the most left-wing EU government has reconfirmed a broad progressive majority, while in Italy a national-conservative government leads Europe’s reactionary movement. Yet, in terms of electorate, Spain and Italy are closer than a first look might suggest. In their last elections, the right-wing camp reached 44 per cent of the vote in Italy and 45 per cent in Spain.

The eurozone crisis happened, and the established ways of doing politics were broken.

The political landscape of both countries went through a significant fragmentation in recent years. In Spain, the socialist PSOE and the conservative PP used to attract 80 to 90 per cent of the vote. Similarly, the two broad coalitions led by the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the centre-right Forza Italia (and their predecessors) would monopolise Italy’s electorate. Then the eurozone crisis happened, and the established ways of doing politics were broken. 

Competition and radicalisation 

In Spain, this shift led to a bigger plurality within the two main blocs. The Left’s more radical wing grew stronger and evolved from Izquierda Unida into Podemos and now Sumar; on the Right, PP had to compete and ally first with liberal-conservative UPyD and Ciudadanos, and then with far-right VOX. 

A Spanish peculiarity is the strength of regional parties, which attract around 10 per cent of the vote. By forming alliances with national-centralist parties, the PP lost any chance of building coalitions with the regionalist right. This new reality helped socialist Pedro Sánchez form a government in 2018, and is now crystallised in a progressive camp stretching from the Left to the regionalist centre-right.  

In Italy, plurality was always a given. What has changed is the balance of power within the Right; in 2018, the League’s Matteo Salvini (a regionalist turned nationalist) put an end to two decades of Silvio Berlusconi’s dominance; in 2022, post-fascist Brothers of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni was elected prime minister. The Right radicalised itself from within. 

Meanwhile, the opposition is deeply divided between the centre-left PD, the Five Star Movement, and a fratricide centrist liberal camp. In an electoral system that rewards unity, the right-wing coalition won 60 per cent of the seats with just 44 per cent of the vote. 

In the fragmented political landscape of both countries, it is no longer enough for centre-left and centre-right parties to convince the electorate to go to vote, instead of abstaining, and to persuade the few centrist voters to choose them instead of their rival. The path to victory is now about building alliances and motivating the electorate that a win is possible. In this new reality, Spanish progressives managed to rally voters against the threat of the far right, and to gather support from the regionalist centre-right. In Italy, a divided progressive camp allowed Giorgia Meloni to walk into power unopposed. 

The rest of southern Europe has gone through equally substantial political changes in the last years. In Portugal, like in Spain, the right-wing camp, which had been united since the transition to democracy in the 1970s, is now marked by internal competition between the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Liberal Initiative (IL) and the far-right Chega, while parties on the Left, more used to multi-centrism, learned to cooperate. 

In Greece, a consequence of the economic crisis has been lower turnout. The decline in voter participation (from 74 per cent in 2007 to 61 and 50 per cent in May and June 2023, respectively) has affected mostly the Left. Between 2009 and 2023, progressives lost almost 2 million votes, or half of their electorate, while the Right remained stable at around 2.7 million votes. This allowed conservative New Democracy to gain an absolute majority in 2023, even though the right camp is more radicalised and atomised than before: the far right, which had no party-political strength in the early 2000s, now represents more than half a million voters across three parliamentary parties (Greek Solution, Spartans, and Niki). 

Implications for Europe 

Can Europe have a progressive breakthrough in 2024? The answer will partly depend on the mobilisation of progressive voters in southern Europe, and which parties will be willing to be part of a progressive coalition that breaks the sectarianism of the current groups. As two of Europe’s largest countries, Spain and Italy will play a big role. The inclusion of Italy’s Five Star Movement in a European progressive camp might prove decisive. 

Can Europe have a progressive breakthrough in 2024? The answer will partly depend on the mobilisation of progressive voters in southern Europe.

The role of the liberal camp cannot be underplayed either. While the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) freely flirts with the national conservatives for a new reactionary alliance, European liberals and centrists still refuse to position themselves clearly. In southern Europe, the liberal camp (when it exists) is small, but it’s still more conservative-liberal and right-wing than in the rest of the continent: in Spain, Ciudadanos led efforts to engage with the far right; in Italy, both Azione and Italia Viva behave more like conservatives than liberals. 

Greens will have a key role too. Southern European Green parties currently have no representation in the EU Parliament, and their weight on EU politics has been minimal for decades. However, the green movement in Spain and Portugal has grown significantly in the last few years. Spain’s Sumar, which brings together Greens and progressive leftists, and Portugal’s LIVRE and PAN, could deliver a relevant Green delegation to Brussels. In Italy, Europa Verde has returned to parliament and has a chance of crossing the 4 per cent threshold. In Greece, the collapse of Syriza under a new centrist leadership could open the space for new progressive forces. 

The four months that separate us from the European elections may already provide some answers. In February, Galicians in northwestern Spain will go to the polls for a regional election that could see a progressive alliance take power after 34 years of almost uninterrupted conservative government. In March, Portugal will hold early elections after a corruption scandal that brought down socialist Prime Minister António Costa. The question is whether Portuguese progressives will manage to mobilise their electorate after eight years of socialist governments, and whether the centre-right will keep its cordon sanitaire against the far right intact.

Riding on a wave of populism and euroscepticism, the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in 2016. After a toxic exit campaign and a painful divorce process, the damage to the UK’s relationship with the bloc seemed irreparable. Fortunately, this was not the case, a dispatch from 2050 confirms.

Looking back on the turbulent events of the early years of this century, it is hard to believe that one of the leading architects of the green and democratic Europe of 2050 could have once been the problem child of the EU. After a decade of economic depression and disillusion with narratives of independence, the UK has more than atoned during its nearly twenty years of positive EU membership since rejoining in 2033.  

In hindsight, Brexit can be seen as a consequence of the teething troubles of becoming a truly global and interconnected world. It is hard to remember now that offshoring and digital technologies posed an existential threat to democracy in the 2020s. The success of the European Green Deal and sustainable finance legislation was vital in creating quality green jobs and countering the disillusion with what historians now call the “stale decades”, when many voters dismissed politicians as little more than corporate shills.  

Of course, the EU’s Positively Digital legislation – inspiring similar regulation across the world – was crucial in countering online disinformation and digital attacks on democracy. The EU’s bold investments in green infrastructure in African countries during those decades reversed centuries of exploitation and helped reduce the emigration of talented Africans, which many European politicians had used to stir up resentment. In my advanced old age, you will indulge me if I reflect on how we achieved this success and how differently things might have turned out following the UK’s ill-informed vote to leave the EU in 2016.   

Deregulation or cooperation? 

In the end, it all happened faster than any of us could have imagined. After a few years of a Labour government doing its very best to make Brexit work in the 2020s, it was quite clear that this was simply unfeasible and that the damage we had done to ourselves by leaving the EU could not be repaired in some piecemeal process. The only option was to reverse it.  

The kind of Brexit we most feared, the one that involved deregulation and what is referred to by historians as Singapore-on-Thames, never became a reality. Most attempts to set up cut-and-paste versions of European laws were rejected by businesses, who did not want to have to make products to two different standards. After promising not to repeal various pieces of environmental legislation, the discredited Brexit government of 2019 to 2024 (commonly regarded as the worst government in the modern history of the UK) abandoned controls on pollution, and it seemed that we were destined to return to being the “dirty man of Europe”.  

After Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019 with the deceitful slogan “getting Brexit done”, the 2024 election offered a new leaf. While Brexit was barely mentioned by Labour or the Conservatives, the damage it had done to our economy and our political fabric lurked in the background and in the minds of many voters.  

Outside of government after their electoral defeat, the Tories became even more extreme, arguing for “Brexit Unchained”: the UK as the deregulated, polluted, free-market nightmare that its most ardent supporters dreamed of back in 2016. In 2024, Labour inherited a country in a direful and broken state. Our rivers were little more than open sewers, our public buildings literally falling apart, and our hospitals barely functioning because of staff shortages and ever-increasing waiting lists.  

The prophecy that Brexit would spell the end of the Conservative Party was eventually fulfilled. 

In this context, the idea that undermining EU environmental protections or further reducing the right to strike could possibly solve our problems looked both cruel and fantastical. It took a few years, but the prophecy that Brexit would spell the end of the Conservative Party was eventually fulfilled. 

Labour accepts the inevitable 

Labour had come into government in 2024 with strict fiscal rules, pledging to fund investment from growth. With no strong ideological attachment to what the Conservatives of the time framed as “Brexit freedoms”, whether on workers’ rights or environmental protections, the Labour government limped on with its acquiescence to the Brexit mantras, while the economy stalled and the desperately urgent needed investments in public services were put on hold.  

The handful of Green MPs elected in 2024 kept strong pressure on Labour to take environmental protection and the energy transition seriously. Labour did their best to achieve a sort of “Green re-alignment”, keeping as close as possible to EU laws as they evolved. Closer cooperation was especially successful in two areas: energy and defence. UK Energy Minister Edward Miliband had always been considered a European leader on climate policy, and he worked closely with other EU energy ministers and with the support of the UK’s emboldened Green MPs to strengthen the COP process and build more positive global action on the climate emergency.  

At the same time, the transition to renewables made energy cooperation essential. Balancing renewable energy across the grid needed more than the capacity of a single country, and the Europe-wide network of energy interconnectors became central as we moved beyond fossil fuels. It was also at the heart of a stronger and more trusting EU-UK working relationship and curiously symbolic of the way they were, in reality, still very closely connected.  

The Green HydrEU initiative, launched in 2025, enabled the UK to use its excess electricity to produce green hydrogen that then replaced imported natural gas across the continent. This was the first real sign that the UK was offering something positive to Europe since the disastrous referendum of 2016.  

The defence realignment of those years was also crucial in rethinking the UK’s place in the world. In 2016, cyberwars and lethal robots were top of mind. Russia’s war on Ukraine focused minds on the reality of what the EU had always been about: keeping peace in Europe. The heroic battle of the Ukrainian people brought together UK and EU defence ministers, not only to support the struggle for freedom but also to work for a true European peace, not a divided continent with an Iron Curtain a few thousand miles to the east.  

The UK’s experience of the peace process in Northern Ireland and Germany’s experience of supporting pro-democracy forces in Eastern Europe were quietly brought to bear on Russia, which blundered its way towards democracy from the failed state and oligarchic chaos of the Putin years. It seemed little short of a miracle that just a decade after Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans joined the EU, and a newly democratic Russia was able to as well, finally fulfilling Gorbachev’s vision of a “common European home” and making a reality of the security guarantees to its territory that Ukraine had fought for.  

Learning the lessons of Brexit 

In spite of these successful collaborations, in the UK Brexit continued to make people’s lives more complicated and business harder, while our economy drifted into stagnation. Two years into the Labour government, it was clear that the UK would continue to slip backwards economically without EU membership. A two-thirds majority of British people supported EU membership, but we still needed to convince our European partners that we would not be as disruptive in the future as we had been in the past.  

By this time, the UK was clearly suffering domestically and on the global stage, being both economically and strategically weakened by the misguided decision to leave the EU. Performative trade deals with Asian economies had done nothing to mend the damage that trade restrictions with the EU had done to so many British businesses. Outside the EU, the UK lost its role as a bridge to the US and the dissolution of the Commonwealth left Britain looking increasingly isolated. Talk of a new “special relationship” with India contributed little economically and, with Russia in chaos and China increasingly authoritarian, the UK found it difficult to find friends and allies at global summits.  

Labour adopted a policy of negotiating to become full EU members in their manifesto for the 2029 election and won resoundingly. The changes to the electoral system they introduced during these years effectively locked the Euroloony Conservatives (as they were by then known) out of power forever but also meant a surge of Green MPs into the 2029 Parliament, together with an increased number of Liberals. The fact that these parties had been so strongly pro-European throughout the period added credibility to the UK’s negotiating position with the EU.  

A chastened but triumphant return 

The negotiations were protracted, with several national capitals understandably needing guarantees of our good faith and potential stumbling blocks over Schengen and the single currency. With Ireland also outside Schengen, we were under no pressure to join initially, but within a decade it became clear that freedom of movement was so widespread across the continent that it simply made no sense to have a barrier at the Irish or English channels. The issue of the euro was more problematic, with many British economists and financiers strongly committed to keeping the pound. This was not a block to our becoming an EU member, but over the decade that followed, our financial markets became so intertwined that joining the euro, which was now subject to democratic control rather than under the power of bankers, was no longer a problem for most British people. The Red-Green government of 2029-34 took us in with little dissent.  

The modernisation of our 17th-century democracy – especially the adoption of a proportional voting system – meant that the worst Eurosceptic forces had forever been excised from our body politic. As those who were once called Eurosceptics grew old and died, they carried on voting for their angry parties, but in ever smaller numbers, so that while they were initially represented in the parliament elected in 2029, by the end of the 2030s they no longer featured.  

For most British citizens, joining the EU was a natural extension of ongoing cooperation.

For most British citizens, joining the EU was a natural extension of ongoing cooperation and a chance to enjoy the boost to our economy that our original membership had meant for us. There were the small practical reasons – the pet passports and roaming charges – and the wider symbolic sense that we were, and had always been, Europeans, and that this was our club as much as anybody else’s. The years on our own had taught most Brits a few lessons: that we no longer ruled the waves, that we were not exceptional, and that we should learn to play our strong but ordinary hand more skilfully and without resentment.  

For politicians who returned to the EU institutions – and I am proud to count myself amongst that number – we returned with a sense of humility and historic responsibility. We understood that the values we might have taken for granted, like the rule of law and democracy, were not inviolable. The EU had guaranteed these for the devastated post-war economies, and the new Mediterranean democracies, and then for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In an increasingly authoritarian world and with our own democratic foundations feeling much less stable than we had imagined, we were grateful to be part of the world’s leading democratic bloc.  

So we returned to the place we had always held: a leading legislative partner in the EU institutions. We were pleased to find that most of the laws we had contributed to during our 40 years of membership – and the EU’s peculiar version of English – had survived our absence. Our return was marked by a renewed commitment to European values and European institutions. After the experience of the previous two decades, who would dare to argue that we would be better off on our own?