What Kind of European Dream?

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As I write this final editorial as Director of the Jacques Delors Institute, and as many of us prepare for a well-deserved summer break, I find myself reflecting on the past three years at the helm of the Institute, observing Europe from a vantage point that has been both unique and demanding. It has not always been easy to determine whether Europeans had finally begun to move forward or whether we remained frozen in place -the metaphor of a rabbit caught in headlights often resurfacing in expert analyses as well as political speeches.

Yet the answer deserves to be more nuanced than public debate often suggests. Europe has acted. Perhaps too slowly, certainly imperfectly, and often painfully. But it has acted. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it embraced the idea of common borrowing and launched NextGenerationEU, whose Recovery and Resilience Facility represented an unprecedented effort and supported a particularly strong recovery in several Southern European countries. Faced with the return of high-intensity warfare on European soil, it remained united in its unwavering support for Ukraine. Faced with energy, industrial, digital and financial dependencies, it began equipping itself with new instruments.

The Single Market, long regarded as a settled achievement, has returned to the centre of the European agenda. It now encompasses 450 million consumers and an economy worth €18 trillion, yet it remains fragmented in key sectors at a time when scale is increasingly synonymous with power. This is precisely the ambition behind the “One Europe, One Market” agenda: to move beyond the four historic freedoms by building a Savings and Investment Union, an Energy Union, a Digital Connectivity Union, and by making research, innovation, data, skills and talent a genuine fifth European freedom.

The same logic underpins industrial policy. With the Industrial Accelerator Act, the European Commission is proposing, for the first time, European requirements for local content and low-carbon production in public procurement and national support schemes. If well designed, this instrument could create European demand for clean technologies manufactured in Europe without triggering a race for national subsidies. Yet it also illustrates our vulnerabilities: if the rules remain too narrow or too riddled with exemptions, what appears to be a paradigm shift on paper risks becoming a paper tiger in practice.

Europe is also acting in the digital sphere, where the AI revolution raises a profoundly political question: who remains in control? Our study with CRiP makes this clear: keeping humans in the loop does not mean slowing innovation. Rather, it means building the technical, regulatory, educational and geopolitical conditions for AI to serve human decision-making instead of replacing democratic deliberation. This imperative echoes a broader concern highlighted by Nicole Gnesotto in relation to the encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas”. AI is not merely a technological issue; it challenges democracy, our values, and human dignity and integrity.

Europe is also stepping up in security and defence. The debates surrounding extended nuclear deterrence demonstrate that European defence must be willing to confront even its most sensitive questions. Beyond military capabilities, this also means strengthening industrial supply chains, reducing technological dependencies, and developing intelligence, communications, logistics, maritime surveillance and long-range strike capabilities.

Yet Europe’s action cannot be guided by strategic interests alone. This may well be one of the most important lessons of recent years. Europe’s geopolitical awakening must not come at the expense of its values. As Thierry Chopin reminds us, it would be a mistake to pit the language of interests and power against that of principles. Solidarity, democracy, the rule of law, the protection of minorities and human dignity are not moral luxuries. They are the very reason Europe can exist as a political community.

This is also why competitiveness cannot become Europe’s sole narrative. Investing in human capital, skills, education and lifelong learning is not simply about meeting the needs of businesses or competing with the United States and China. It is about giving Europeans the means to shape, rather than endure, the transitions ahead. While this challenge is widely acknowledged, a persistent tension remains: skills policy is still too often subordinated to the competitiveness agenda instead of being recognised as a strategic investment in its own right. The consequences are as political as they are economic. When transitions are experienced as dispossession, feelings of abandonment fuel distrust and support for anti-establishment fringes.

This social dimension will be at the heart of the next Multiannual Financial Framework. The proposed 2028–2034 budget fundamentally reshapes EU finances by consolidating several instruments into broader envelopes, notably National and Regional Partnership Plans and the European Competitiveness Fund. Yet simplification also carries risks: social and employment priorities could become less visible, less protected and ultimately less well funded. A study conducted for the European Parliament shows that, despite a 14% spending floor for social objectives, social expenditure could decline both as a share of the budget and, depending on Member States’ choices, even in absolute terms.

There are, nevertheless, reasons for optimism. Young Europeans are more supportive than older generations of a stronger EU budget, and they rank education, training, youth, climate, health, employment and housing among their top priorities. Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps, DiscoverEU and youth employment initiatives are far from secondary policies. They allow young people to experience Europe before theorising it – to feel Europe before they are asked to defend it.

Enlargement reminds us of this same democratic imperative. The Flamingo movement in Albania, born out of opposition to an opaque investment project along a protected coastline, represents far more than a local dispute. It expresses a broader aspiration for transparency, the rule of law, environmental protection and a renewed political contract.

Even the sea, long regarded primarily as a space for trade and resource extraction, has become emblematic of Europe’s evolving strategic outlook. The Union depends on the sea for 75% of its external trade and 99% of global data flows, while maritime infrastructure faces growing hybrid threats, militarisation and shadow fleets. Here too, the response cannot be purely security-driven. The forthcoming Ocean Act should make ecological integrity a cornerstone of Europe’s geopolitical resilience and strategic autonomy.

This brings us to the central question: why, despite all these initiatives, does enthusiasm for Europe remain so fragile? Why does support for the Union so often stem from necessity – a “we have no choice” narrative – rather than genuine conviction? Why are political fragmentation, polarisation and the temptation of withdrawal gaining ground at precisely the moment Europe is proving that it can act?

Perhaps because we now know what we must protect ourselves against: war, strategic dependencies, foreign interference, energy shocks, industrial decline, disinformation and climate change. We also know which instruments to mobilise: the EU budget, the Single Market, industrial policy, regulation, defence, investment and skills. But do we still know how to articulate what we aspire to build? What kind of Europe do we want to inhabit in ten or twenty years? A Europe that is simply more resilient? More sovereign? More competitive? Greener? More social? More democratic? Of course, all of the above. Yet these ambitions must be woven into a coherent narrative. We must prioritise, make choices and sustain our action over time.

Perhaps what Europe now needs is to build a European dream at a time when the American Dream appears increasingly uncertain, while European integration continues to inspire growing support both across Europe and beyond. Easier said than done, of course, when twenty-seven democracies must navigate political polarisation and tight budgetary constraints, and when reacting to crises is always easier than collectively defining a long-term horizon. And yet, that is precisely what we need: to move from a Europe that reacts to a Europe that chooses.