European Sentiment Compass 2024

Here’s the 2024 edition of the European Sentiment Compass – Welcome to Barbieland: European Sentiment in the year of wars and elections – an annual publication and joint initiative by European Council on Foreign Relations and the European Cultural Foundation.

Based on an annual survey carried out by our two institutions, we believe the elections have revealed three particularly important “blind spots” in the EU of today. The report examines these ‘blind spots’ the EU must attend to, reflecting on the extent to which they have been exposed by two major events of the past year: the war in Gaza and the European Parliament election. It describes the relationship between these ‘blind spots’ [that the EU is too white, too Western and too boomer] and the risk of xenophobic drift in the EU.

It recommends three key actions for pro-Europeans: firstly, to open up workable channels of participation in Europe for all EU inhabitants, especially those who may currently feel voiceless; secondly, to resist the temptation to adopt an ‘ethnic’ conception of Europeanness, whether for electoral or strategic reasons; and thirdly, to fill the ‘civic’ conception of Europeanness with content to offer a tangible and attractive alternative.

In the movie Barbie the titular character comes to realise that Barbieland is not the utopia she assumed it to be. Similarly, European political leaders have blind spots that illustrate the difference between the principle and the reality of the EU’s Enlightenment ideals. In time, these could come to undermine the health of democracy inside the bloc.

You may read news articles on the report in The Guardian or Politico Europe. And a op’ed by our Director André Wilkens and ECFR’s Senior Policy Fellow Pawel Zerka on Euronews. If you prefer listening, here’s The Europeans podcast.