I Have EU Anxiety: The Fear of a Europe Without Core Values - EuropeNight Essay Contest (Shortlist)

On 28 February 2026, the European Parliament reiterated its condemnation of “Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.” Four days later, three American missiles wiped a girls’ school in Iran off the face of the earth. “Understanding”, is what Von der Leyen, Rutte and Jetten expressed for this ruthless war of aggression. For the girls who looked up from their schoolbooks and found death, they paid no heed. Until recently, my generation and I still dared to believe in democracy, peace and human rights as the promise and guiding principles of the European project. Today, confronted with Europe’s failure to uphold its core values, a peculiar fear is taking hold of us. I arrive at a diagnosis: my generation suffers from EU anxiety.

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EU anxiety, much like climate anxiety, revolves around the fear that current political choices are steering us toward a future loss. Whereas climate anxiety concerns the loss of our planet, EU anxiety concerns the fear of losing our geopolitical norms and values: our place and identity on this planet.
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With a growing sense of powerlessness, young Europeans watch the geopolitical inconsistency and moral dissonance of their political leaders unfold: for this Europe, war is only a problem when it is waged against us, international law is only guiding when it suits us, and a genocide is only a genocide when we ourselves are being exterminated. It gives us EU anxiety: the fear of growing old in a Europe where democracy, peace and human rights have become nothing more than empty rhetoric. 
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Where does today’s EU anxiety come from? What explains its increase in recent years? And how has Europe drifted so far away from its core values? As a policy researcher for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I studied the relationship between the Netherlands, the EU and NATO. On a daily basis, I experienced that the answers to these questions lie in Europe’s unconditional loyalty to its supposed protector: the United States (US).
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Under Trump, the US has radicalised from the world’s corrupt police officer into an international tyrant. The EU knows that Trump’s geopolitical principles are diametrically opposed to its own professed core values. Yet, like a desperate child, the EU continues to cling to the hand of its big brother. The consequence of this weakness of character is that the blood the US sheds also stains European hands. Out of love for the US and for our own wallets, the EU intensified its trade relations with the Netanyahu regime during genocide; out of fear of retaliation, it did not speak out against the illegal invasion of Venezuela; and now the EU expresses its “understanding” for the US and its incomprehensible war in the Middle East.
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Let it be clear: with its unconditional loyalty to the US, the EU claims its place in history books as the approving passenger of the contemporary American imperialist project. The ride, however, is not free: in order to keep holding on to the hand of the US, the EU must drop its own core values. It is Europe’s rapid moral sell-out that explains the current wave of EU anxiety.
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Opposed to this surge of EU anxiety stands a popular counterargument used to justify European loyalty to the US. The motto is that the EU is simply militarily dependent on the US, and that especially in these uncertain geopolitical times it is compelled to remain loyal to its most important ally. This line of reasoning is based on the conviction that the EU can guarantee its security by subordinating itself to the US, but this is precisely where the problem lies.
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The US has repeatedly shown that it can stop its support at any moment. It will even turn its aggression against Europe whenever it sees fit. The military threat against Greenland is only one example from a long list. Trump, after all, has always been open about it: his ultimate goal for the EU is its dissolution. It is a fatal misconception to think that Europe’s security can be bought through loyalty to its self-declared murderer.
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The EU is indeed to a large extend militarily dependent on the US. But if the EU wishes to preserve both its safety and its core values in the future, this observation should not serve as a justification for passivity, but rather as a call to action.
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When the US threatened to invade Greenland, a mirror was held up to the EU: this is what it feels like when international core values no longer matter. Now that the US is developing from ally into threat, this mirror will continue to haunt us. I invite all of Europe and its political representatives to grasp the mirror, look themselves deeply in the eyes, and wake up. If, in the twenty-first century, Europe genuinely wishes to uphold its core values with conviction and credibility, everyone would do well to partake in the EU anxiety.

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