Europe’s Approach to Defending Democracy Is Failing

European democracy is being battered by multiple storms. Far-right parties are surging across the continent, authoritarian powers are menacing the democratic information space, and mainstream governments seem incapable of quelling popular frustration. And the European Union must now also contend with the perplexing oddity of a U.S. administration that is painting its democratic governments as the main global threat to democracy. The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy unnervingly defended the illiberal parties that most clearly menace democracy, and going into 2026, the Trump administration has become even more unchained in its voracious provocations against Europe’s liberal order.

This roiling sea of troubles has sparked intense political debate about what is needed to make European democracy more resilient. Even if overall levels of democracy in Europe have not worsened significantly over the last decade (Hungary being the one case of clear autocratization), the prospect of a more dramatic democratic collapse in the future is real.

This roiling sea of troubles has sparked intense political debate about what is needed to make European democracy more resilient. Even if overall levels of democracy in Europe have not worsened significantly over the last decade (Hungary being the one case of clear autocratization), the prospect of a more dramatic democratic collapse in the future is real.

As problems pile up, the EU and individual governments have begun to explore policies to shore up the continent’s increasingly precarious democratic norms and institutions. The European Centre for Democratic Resilience was launched in February, and most European governments have introduced national strategies to defend democracy, as well.

These policy responses have been slow to take shape over the last decade but are now gaining momentum and coming to dominate EU policy agendas. However, emerging European strategies misunderstand what is needed for effective democratic resilience, and their impact is likely to be harmful in many important ways. Europe’s democratic defense policies must not only counter threats coming from autocratic powers and radical right movements, but they must also work to reform and upgrade how democracy itself functions.

However, democratic resilience strategies need to focus on other problems to at least the same intensity. European democracy cannot be comprehensively defended through formal standards and exchanges on best practices for online election standards or internet laws—which is what passes for most democracy strategy at present.

Neither can it be improved simply by asserting tough European autonomy from the United States and other powers, however necessary it might be for other reasons. Due to the geopolitical context, much debate has atrophied into calls for European autonomy. But this line does not help in determining how Europe should use such independence to revive its democracy.

That’s because efforts to control specific types of information manipulation address the symptoms rather than the underlying distortions of information ecosystems. Online controls are necessary, but they cannot tackle the root causes of why certain information flows carry disproportionate and unaccountable power and why citizens are so susceptible to such distorted accounts. If malign online influences have gained traction, then that is a result of democratic corrosion as much as the cause—the very opposite of the logic that is hardwired into current European approaches.

The EU’s regulatory-oriented pathway amounts to what might be termed “resilience without politics.” It needs to give way to a much more political approach to democratic resistance. Current European approaches downplay the essentially political issues that need addressing if democracy is to work better for all citizens. Properly understood, democratic resilience is not a matter of simply rebuffing threats—whether from Russia, China, or the United States—but about improving democratic practices through qualitative political renewal.

Much of Europe’s democratic malaise is endogenous to democracy, not external.

At root, European democracies are so brittle because of their governments’ own nefarious dysfunctionalities and the structural power imbalances that sustain them. On this score, the EU has registered little progress and even exhibits a certain resistance to contemplating the ambitious change that is needed.

Many emerging policies center on mitigating polarization as the main dynamic that has corroded European democracy. Leaders’ speeches tend to suggest that saving democracy is a matter of rebuilding consensus and “the center holding.” Yet, again, this kind of bromide unduly depoliticizes democratic resilience. While the anti-democratic impact of extremist parties clearly needs to be contained, democracy protection cannot be reduced to consensual centrism. If anything, it requires more open and critical politics.

Polarization germinates in political systems’ failure to prevent a wide enough range of policy options that are fully responsive to citizens’ concerns. This was clear during the eurozone crisis when rival parties offered relatively similar economic templates and new governments often assumed power with negligible change to substantive policies.

Effective democratic resilience ultimately requires a revived spirit of contestation and pluralism. And this needs to be facilitated and supported through very specific and tailored political measures.

As much of the threat to European democracy comes from challenger political parties, EU resilience strategies need to help revive and reshape party systems. However, virtually no European effort or funding goes to this issue. Resilience is a not just a matter of containing radical right parties but of more deeply changing the way that parties interact with citizens and the way that they decide their manifestos and crafting less hierarchical forms of party organization. The same is true of parliaments: They have lost leverage in most European states, but EU policy offers little to redress this trend.

Democracy strategies also need to be aware of the ways in which societies are mobilizing to protest against illiberal regimes and threats. But the EU has refrained from offering unequivocal support to protests in member states like Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia or in candidate states like Serbia and Georgia. Indeed, the EU has generally been ambivalent over these revolts and tends to call blandly for even-handed restraint from regimes and protestors in such cases.

A demonstration against the state television network in Budapest, Hungary, on Nov. 4, 2022.Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images

This leaves a curious disjuncture. The EU rightly bears down on Russian and Chinese FIMI operations—and indeed those increasingly coming from U.S. illiberal networks—that are designed to turn people against democracy. But when there is ample evidence on the streets that European citizens do believe in democracy and are acting in its name, they get little support from the EU itself. Indeed, national governments have even sought to curtail such popular mobilization in the last several years. This betrays European governments’ tendency to conceive democracy in technocratic terms—as a system to be carefully guided and managed—and to downplay the catalytic role of citizen-led, pluralistic contestation.

The European level of politics also needs to be considered: A pressing source of citizens’ disenfranchisement comes from the transfer of powers from the national to the EU level without commensurate democratic accountability. This structural feature of European integration is as much of a challenge as Russian or MAGA online manipulation. This does not mean slowing or undoing EU integration—indeed, deeper cooperation between governments is clearly essential to defending democracy, and Europeans need to push back more firmly against the Trump administration’s declared hostility to the EU’s very existence. But democratic resilience does require the European project to democratize itself.

The current European framing of democratic resilience almost willfully ignores this factor. The EU and its member states talk ritually about the need to engage citizens but do relatively little to follow through on this. The European Commission and some member states now run citizen panels and assemblies, but the need goes well beyond these valuable initiatives and requires a sweeping effort at more inclusive democracy across many levels and actors. Citizens, community groups, and the many civic organizations working on democratic renewal need tangible influence over policies through processes institutionalized in formal EU decision-making, which is well beyond the cosmetic and heavily curated civil society forums that currently exist. The EU should more wholeheartedly back innovative means of transnational citizen engagement—like pan-European democracy movements and assemblies—that differ from the nation-state template of representative democracy.

An emerging position in EU debates is that liberals need to “fight fire with fire” through hardball tactics against illiberal forces—and especially those driven by U.S.-led MAGA networks. That is, they need to move from defense to offense. Examples include emerging legal actions in several European states, particularly Germany and France, against far-right parties and politicians. Across Europe, there are growing calls for liberal lawfare against illiberal lawfare, tactics to weaken illiberal groups in the same way that illiberal regimes now restrict liberal civil society, and other such confrontational moves.

The EU must strike a balance here. While democratic resilience strategies certainly need to be more assertive against the radical right, they should be cautious in using laws and institutional processes to engineer highly instrumental outcomes. European liberals must not conflate defending democracy with defending their own position against illiberal challengers. Even if the Trump administration’s charges against Europe’s supposedly undemocratic liberalism and free speech restrictions are clearly disingenuous, European democracy strategies do need to speak much more directly to this thorny question. Policies need to clearly define red lines that should not be crossed in the use of illiberal means to defend liberal politics. Democracy’s long-term prospects will suffer if many feel that legal actions against illiberals infringe on due process or that civil society funding rules are biased.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (center) stands surrounded by leaders from Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Portugal, Belgium, and Luxemborg at an EU Council Informal Leaders’ Meeting in Brussels on June 17, 2024. Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images

Combined, this all points to the need for a full-spectrum democratic resilience that can turn the tide against the radical right’s disquieting political illiberalism. For now, European attempts at democratic resilience are planted in shallow soil. The shock of U.S. President Donald Trump’s illiberal onslaught catalyzed some modest new EU democracy commitments in 2025, within and beyond Europe. However, much stronger political commitment, boldness, and innovation will be needed if these are to grow into a sturdier approach to defending and deepening European democracy. And this is not a parochial matter: Europe’s experience in democratic resilience will inform and condition efforts in other regions to push back against this era’s illiberal tide.