Europeans still want a stronger union, but no longer believe they can see the road to it

Europeans still want a stronger union. They just no longer believe they can see the road to it. That is the actual finding of Future nostalgia: Europe’s unfinished song, published on 8 September by Paweł Zerka for the European Council on Foreign Relations with the European Cultural Foundation.

WELT read the ECFR study as a political verdict rather than as a map of mixed public moods. Its headline turned the interviews into “70 percent rejection” and called the result “a devastating testimony for Europe,” pairing the piece with a photo of Ursula von der Leyen and treating the poll as proof that the EU project itself had failed a public exam. That framing stressed decline and institutional blame. It said much less about the report’s own distinction: most respondents still wanted a stronger, more united Europe; what they doubted was whether leaders could get there.

It is not a referendum on leaving the EU. It is a study of how people describe the present and whether they can imagine a workable future.

70 Prozent Ablehnung – dieses Votum ist ein verheerendes Zeugnis für Europa https://t.co/VDJIpVwn45 pic.twitter.com/6ktCH3xf7X
— WELT (@welt) September 9, 2026

The research is unusual. Mandate Research ran 5,834 AI-moderated interviews between 30 April and 15 May 2026 in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. Respondents spoke or typed for under 18 minutes. Answers were transcribed, translated and coded with AI assistance, then weighted to match each country’s adult population. Desk research in 15 countries sat alongside the interviews. The method captures language more than tick-box approval ratings, which is why a headline like “70 percent rejection” flattens what the material actually shows.

Asked how Europe looks to a friend who fell asleep five years ago, 68 percent on average spoke of deterioration or a loss of normality. Only 12 percent described an awakening. The gap is sharp by country: 21 percent in Poland used the language of renewal; 5 percent in France did. Almost three-quarters said Europe is coping badly with its biggest problems. Those problems, in people’s own words, are war and security first, then economic pressure, then autonomy, migration, slowness and what they see as double standards. Fifty-six percent agreed that Europe’s future is in danger; 21 percent disagreed.

The same conversations do not produce an exit mandate. About three-quarters offered a positive picture of Europe in 20 years: more unity and political integration, more peace and security, or more prosperity. Only about 13 percent hoped for “less Europe” or for the Union to dissolve. People also blamed national governments twice as often as EU institutions. The political problem in the report is not that attachment has collapsed. It is that belief in delivery has. Zerka calls that the imagination gap: the destination is still visible; the route is not. About half the public shows it. Among the “uncertain” group the share is closer to three-quarters. Poland is the main exception.

Zerka sorts respondents into four groups.

The positive, just under a fifth, still hear renewal. Crises, for them, are forcing Europe to grow up. They are denser among voters of parties that already sell European competence.

The negative are the largest group in France, Italy and Germany. They treat each new shock as proof that the project was misconceived. The report says this outlook is near-hegemonic among voters of AfD, National Rally and Reform UK.

The uncertain, around a third in most of the six countries and a quarter in Britain, still feel European and still want a finished song. They do not trust the musicians. This is the swing audience in the study.

The disconnected, about a tenth everywhere except Britain (22 percent), treat Europe as background noise. Brexit and non-membership help explain the British outlier.

Leadership barely fills the gap. Forty-four percent named no positive example of European action. Across the six countries, which did not include Spain, 8 percent still pointed to Pedro Sánchez or to Spain under him, often for refusing to follow Washington. Emmanuel Macron appeared as a positive example for 4 percent. Memory of joint action—vaccines, support for Ukraine, sport, even Eurovision—survives. Living proof of a leader who can convert that memory into a believable next decade does not.

Zerka’s conclusion is political, not sentimental. He argues that pro-European leaders should stop selling a new dream and start making the existing one look reachable: admit slowness and inconsistency, show a causal chain from a present problem to a European fix, and treat the uncertain as the audience that matters. The phrase “future nostalgia” is borrowed on purpose. It is not a wish to rewind the 1990s. It is a wish to recover the feeling that tomorrow is still in reach.

The limits of the study should sit next to the findings. Six countries are not the EU-27. The United Kingdom is inside the sample and outside the Union. Interviews were coded by a model using author-written definitions, then checked by the research team. ECFR and the European Cultural Foundation are openly invested in a working European project; they are not a neutral statistical office. None of that erases the pattern in the transcripts. People can still name the Europe they want. They struggle to name the steps, the timetable and the faces that would get them there.

That is a harder problem than a protest poll. A public that wants less Europe can be outvoted or ignored until the next election. A public that wants more Europe and no longer believes the score will be finished has to be shown the next bar. The report’s title is accurate: the melody is familiar. The song is not done.

Caption: Workers adjust a European Union’s flag during a visit of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the company Eutelsat Oneweb in Nuuk, Greenland, 07 September 2026. The Enhanced Satellite Connectivity Project for Greenland was officially launched in Nuuk on 7 September with the aim of extending reliable, high-speed, low-latency satellite internet to remote and rural communities in Greenland, as part of a broader EU–Greenland Partnership Package worth 200 million euros that was presented. EPA/Mads Claus Rasmussen