Headlines Team
The gaslighting of European grievances and blaming it all on migration seems to go well for those orchestrating a European collapse. After speaking with Europeans on the ground, I came away with a clear impression: the frustration is about having too little say over decisions that shape their lives, while being expected to carry the costs.
The concerns are concrete. Money for military expansion while starting a family feels financially out of reach. A more expensive and vulnerable energy supply. Barriers to affordable electric cars. Social media governed by billionaires abroad who hate Europe. The renewed promotion of military service. Infrastructure that deserves the urgency not attached to rearmament.
Together, these grievances raise a question Europe’s leaders need to answer: whose priorities are being served?
Start with public money. For the Europeans expressing these frustrations, paying for wars they never voted for means financing commitments they never personally endorsed. They want help building a life: somewhere affordable to live, childcare they can manage and enough financial stability to consider having children.
Against those needs, the scale of military ambition is striking. The European Commission’s ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 plan aims to mobilise €800 billion for increased defence spending, through measures including greater borrowing flexibility and a €150 billion loan instrument. These ambitions carry consequences for public priorities over the coming years.
Citizens are entitled to question budgets they consider inflated. They are entitled to demand an explanation for why military expansion receives such urgency while support for family formation remains inadequate in their own lives. Every additional commitment carries an opportunity cost. The same public euro cannot simultaneously fund weapons procurement and a nursery place.
Energy adds another source of resentment. Europe has largely lost the cheap gas supply it once received from Russia, its former primary supplier. It has replaced part of that pipeline supply with LNG shipped across the Atlantic from the United States. In 2025, the US supplied almost 58% of EU LNG imports. Council of the EU
That replacement supply requires liquefaction, ocean transport and regasification. Greater dependence on LNG also exposes Europe more directly to global competition for cargoes and disruptions to international shipping. Households and businesses have to live with the costs and uncertainty.
For people paying the bills, the priority is affordable, dependable energy. They deserve to judge energy policy by what it costs to heat a home and keep a business operating. Losing access to much of a previously cheaper supply is a material setback that deserves a direct political reckoning.
The frustration extends to transport. An affordable battery electric car could allow a household to stop buying diesel or petrol for its daily journeys. Manufacturers such as BYD offer another route towards that choice.
Yet the EU has placed additional duties on Chinese-made battery electric vehicles, including a 17% countervailing duty for BYD. These measures put a further barrier between imported vehicles and European buyers. European Commission
For a driver trying to escape expensive fuel, affordability matters. If a car meets the required standards and suits a household’s needs, buyers should have a strong voice in deciding whether it belongs in their driveway. A transition that households cannot afford risks becoming another instruction delivered without sufficient regard for their circumstances.
There is also the question of who controls the online spaces where Europeans discuss these very issues.
On major American social platforms, the systems that rank, recommend and distribute European conversations belong to companies beyond European voters’ control. Facebook and Instagram sit within Meta, where Mark Zuckerberg holds controlling voting power. That gives one American billionaire extraordinary corporate influence over platforms used for public discussion across Europe.
Recommendation systems help determine which arguments travel, which voices gain attention and what appears repeatedly in people’s feeds. Europeans have reason to resent having so much of their public conversation mediated through commercial systems whose owners they cannot vote out.
Then comes conscription. For people who oppose compulsory military service, the renewed emphasis on recruitment and readiness creates an immediate concern about control over their own futures.
Germany illustrates why the debate feels tangible. Its new system requires young men to answer a military questionnaire, while allowing parliament to introduce needs-based conscription through further legislation. Military service currently rests on volunteering, but the possibility of compulsion is explicitly part of the framework.
To opponents, the steady promotion of military service can feel like propaganda preparing them to accept something they have already rejected. Their refusal deserves political weight. Young people should have a decisive voice in decisions that could interrupt their education, employment, relationships and plans for a family.
Finally, there is what they would choose instead: infrastructure.
Reliable trains, maintained roads, functioning water systems, modern electricity networks and better public transport offer visible improvements to everyday life. They make communities easier to live in and economies easier to sustain.
The preference expressed in these conversations is straightforward: direct more resources towards building the places where people live. Give civilian infrastructure the funding, coordination and urgency that governments can summon for military priorities.
Europe’s leaders should take that demand seriously. People want their taxes to help them establish families, afford energy, choose their transport and improve their communities. They want greater control over their conversations and their futures.
They deserve a Europe whose ambitions they can recognise in the lives they are trying to build.
