This summer, emotions have made a strong comeback in European politics. US President Donald Trump leveraged Europe’s dependence on the American security guarantee—and Ukraine’s vulnerability—to force Brussels into accepting a trade agreement that is anything but fair. And the deal clearly itches European’s pride.
The sense of humiliation—of pride being trampled—is, of course, deeply rooted in France, the former world power. Generations of French politicians have sold European integration as a way of overcoming humiliations at the hands of the United States, whether in the 1956 Suez crisis or the 2022 AUKUS submarine deal.
But this feeling that the world is walking all over Europe is no longer uniquely French. It seems to be spreading across the continent.
A recent poll across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland found that 52 percent of respondents felt “humiliated” when they learned about the EU-US trade agreement, concluded at Trump’s Scottish Turnberry golf resort on August 29. Another 22 percent felt “indifferent,” 8 percent “relieved,” and just 1 percent “proud.”
EUmotions
The EU is often thought of as an economic community. Some want it to be more of a political community. But it began, above all, as an emotional community.
There were plenty of security and economic reasons to merge Western Europe’s coal and steel markets in 1951, or to create a customs union in 1957. But the deeper motivation behind taming the nation state within a shared community was fear—fear of oneself mirrored in Europe’s own destructive past.
The European project took a turn when another—this time more positive emotion—erupted on the continent. As military dictatorships in Southern Europe collapsed, the excitement of “coming together” overcame the doubts of Europe’s leaders. Greece, Spain, and Portugal joined the EU in record time in the 1980s.
Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall. The energy of Europe’s reunification pushed leaders to go even further in tying their fates by introducing a common currency. It was also this emotional surge and sense of being in a historical moment that led the French to narrowly vote for the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, founding today’s EU.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Europeans again experienced a flash of solidarity. Faced with death, and watching northern Italian hospitals being overwhelmed, they overcame the “taboo” of joint debt and agreed to share the burden.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked the latest wave of solidarity. Remarkably, little war fatigue is visible in public opinion. More than three years in, 80 percent of Europeans still support taking in Ukrainian refugees. Seventy-six percent back financial support for Kyiv. And Europe has embarked on the long journey of taking responsibility for its own security.
Collective Wins, Collective Losses
Looking back, what is striking is how, in these turning points, emotions across Europe were synchronized.
Take France, for example. For many French citizens, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 remains a defining personal memory, even for those who never set foot across the Rhine. Ask a 50-year-old from Roscoff or Nice, and you will often hear vivid recollections of how they learned about the events, instinctively realizing that Berlin’s fate also concerned them.
One striking example of this memory is a large-scale public health campaign currently visible across Paris. The posters show a snapshot of the Berlin Wall’s fall, alongside a German flag, with the words: “We did not live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall. But we will live to see the end of AIDS. Now it is up to our generation to write history.”
The end of the Cold War felt like a collective European victory—from Bucharest to Porto. In contrast, Europe caving in to Trump in the trade war feels like a collective defeat.
Perhaps the emotion is so intense because the disappointment cuts across party lines. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) denounced the deal as loudly as the Greens. And failure cannot be pinned on one side alone: Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right nationalist prime minister, is as responsible as the pro-European centrist, French President Emmanuel Macron.
European Pride
The question now is: What will Europeans do with this broadly shared sense of failure? Can something constructive grow out of such a negative emotion as humiliation?
One possibility is that it could fuel a reckless politics of resentment. The promise of restoring lost prestige or self-respect is what enables autocrats to dismantle democracies at home. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin justifies his war against the West as a way of overcoming the humiliation of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
But humiliation can also catalyze the strengthening of collective identity. It can foster solidarity, binding people together to confront the perceived injustice. Perhaps Europe needs this wound in order to act.
What is clear is that over this “summer of humiliation,” the contours of a hurt European pride have begun to emerge. A sentiment that in this new world, we Europeans are indeed weak, and our sovereignty contingent. Like all things that are emerging, Europe is first and foremost a space that is experienced before being a space that is defined. Trump has certainly added to that experience.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
