Europe’s middle classes are increasingly dissatisfied with governing institutions and establishment political parties, while skepticism of the war effort in Ukraine is more widespread than many thought, a new study has found.
The report by the Martens Centre, the think tank of the centrist, pro-EU European People’s Party, acknowledged that mainstream parties and governments are losing support, but claimed the solution was more European integration.
“There is no denying that representative institutions and traditional political parties are in crisis. Our results only confirm that,” the study stated.
Report author and senior researcher Federico Ottavio Reho told The European Conservative: “I will tell you the finding that struck me the most: the study revealed that in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe, notably Bulgaria, Greece and Slovakia, a sizable portion of the citizens feel let down by society, while significant minorities have greater than average distrust in the EU and trust in Russia.”
The study also indicated that support for the war effort in Ukraine may be a luxury belief. The lower middle class are more concerned about the economic impact of the war and less supportive of providing military support to Ukraine, while the wealthier are more supportive of intervention, the Martens Centre found.
Reho said the study has already proven prescient in reference to Slovakia’s recent elections, won by a left-wing party opposed to giving military aid to Ukraine. The rather drastic political shift in Slovakia had surprised many observers but not Reho.
The report makes the questionable claim that the issue of migration was a specific concern only in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. “The lower (middle) classes see inflation and corruption as a bigger threat,” the report claims, “Whereas the upper (middle) classes more often mention energy dependency, the aging population, and worker shortages as threats.”
Economically, the survey found a significant East-West divide, as well. In Western Europe, where countries had joined the EU before 2004, the middle class was far more pessimistic about the future and more doubtful that their children’s standard of living would improve. To the east, among countries such as Poland that joined the EU more recently, members of the middle class generally thought their children had a bright future economically.
However, in keeping with the ideology of the European People’s Party, the report suggested that the solution to growing distrust in governing institutions was more Europe. “The solution must be to rejuvenate political parties by reinforcing their transnational European umbrellas and injecting new forms of direct participation and citizen engagement into their increasingly centralistic and leader-centered structures,” it said.
It even claimed that EPP members, most of which are traditionally centre-right Christian Democratic parties, could combine populist sentiment with Euro-integrationism.
“High trust in ordinary people also captures the potential to rejuvenate democracy through new forms of civic activism and participation at the local, national, and transnational levels,” the report said. However, the task ahead is “connecting this novel potential with the EU and embedding it more stably within its democratic process.”
The undesirable alternative, it claimed, would be “disintermediated” forms of political representation, which could lead to “populist and plebiscitarian forms of democracy.”
The survey of 27 countries was conducted in April by the Netherlands-based market research firm Glocalities, and the final analysis was published at the end of September.
