Young Europeans losing faith in democracy, poll finds
A majority from Europe's generation Z – 57% – prefer democracy to any other form of government. Rates of support varied significantly, however, reaching just 48% in Poland and only about 51-52% in Spain and France, with Germany highest at 71%.
More than one in five – 21% – would favour authoritarian rule under certain, unspecified circumstances. This was highest in Italy at 24% and lowest in Germany with 15%. In France, Spain and Poland the figure was 23%.
Nearly one in 10 across the nations said they did not care whether their government was democratic or not, while another 14% did not know or did not answer.
Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, who worked on the study, said: 'Among people who see themselves as politically to the right of centre and feel economically disadvantaged, their support of democracy sinks to just one in three.
'Democracy is under pressure, from within and without.'
The study was carried out in April and May. More than 6,700 people between the ages of 16 and 26 in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Poland responded to the ninth annual survey by the YouGov institute for the Tui Foundation, which funds projects dedicated to youth in Europe.
Forty-eight per cent worry that the democratic system in their own country is endangered, including 61% in Germany, where the economy – Europe's biggest – is ailing and the far right has made significant inroads, fuelled in part by increased backing from young voters.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House, the rise of China, and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine have shifted power away from Europe in the respondents' perception, with just 42% counting the EU among the top three global players.
Despite – or perhaps because of – Brexit, the figure was highest among Britons at 50%. Of those surveyed in the UK, 73% wanted a return to the EU, while nearly half of young Europeans (47%) sought stronger ties between the EU and Britain.
The US was seen by 83% as part of the power trio, followed by China with 75% and Russia on 57%.
Rising polarisation is also driving young Europeans to the ideological fringes along with their elders, but a notable gender divide has emerged in the process.
Nearly one in five – 19% – described themselves as politically right of centre, up from 14% in 2021, while 33% called themselves centrists, 32% as leftist and 16% without any designation.
Women in Germany, France and Italy identified as progressive in higher numbers than four years ago, while young men in Poland and Greece have grown more conservative in the same period.
Support for tougher restrictions on migration has grown across the board since 2021, to 38% from 26%.
Most young Europeans expressed hope in the EU's potential, and two in three overwhelmingly supported their country remaining in the bloc if it still was. But 39% described the EU as not particularly democratic and just 6% said their own national governments worked well, with little need for significant changes.
More than half – 53% – felt the EU was too focused on details and trivial matters. They would like the bloc to tackle the high cost of living, bolster defence against external threats and create better conditions for companies to improve the economy.
Elke Hlawatschek, the head of the Tui Foundation, said: 'The European project, which has brought us peace, freedom of movement and economic progress for decades, is seen as unwieldy.'
Greek people see the strongest need for fundamental overhaul of their political system and are most sceptical about the EU, which Faas described as rooted in enduring trauma of the eurozone debt crisis that drove their country's economy to the brink.
Despite stronger support for climate protection among young Europeans, just one in three said it should take priority over economic growth. The figure has slipped from 44% in 2021.
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The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?
Threats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president's warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation. In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world's richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden's former homeland security secretary. The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump's agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech. On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government. But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump's signature 'one big beautiful bill' into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents. 'Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk's companies, and – it seemed – his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters before boarding a flight to Florida. 'We might have to put Doge on Elon,' he said, referring to the unofficial 'department of government efficiency' that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. 'Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible.' Musk's many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump's behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him. But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners. 'Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world's richest man, he could certainly do it to you,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. 'It's important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.' Musk was not the only target of Trump's capricious vengeance. He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats' prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration. Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to 'Alligator Alcatraz', a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump's flagship mass-deportation policy. After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media. 'Why hasn't he been arrested yet?' asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified – and subsequently impeached – by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border. 'Was he given a pardon, Mayorkas?' Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: 'I'll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence … Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn't necessarily hold him harmless.' Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to 'communist' Mamdani – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist – over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: 'Then we will have to arrest him. We don't need a communist in this country. I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.' He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 – who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child – was in the country 'illegally', an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through 'willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism'. The threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump's border 'czar' Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump's deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice's arrests of immigrants. Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism. 'Part of the rhetoric we've heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,' he said. 'Mamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren't questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.' Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump's second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents – including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives – as 'the enemy within'. Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year's defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked. Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump's first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander. Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden's adult children, Hunter and Ashley. Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration. For now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces – whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for 'treason' and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed – have not materialised. 'I [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn't done that,' said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets. 'There are all kinds of lists floating around … with names of people that might be under investigation, but you'll never know you're under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep – and these people are just getting on with their lives.' Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump's latest threats should be taken seriously – especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference. 'When the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that's as serious as it gets,' said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama's administration. 'Whether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it's designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.' While some doubt the legal basis of Trump's threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally. 'Trump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,' he said. 'When the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn't be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].' But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned. 'One definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,' he said. 'When the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn't like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you're no longer free. 'And if he's making clear that that's true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump is waging war against the media
Bernie Sanders, the venerable democratic socialist senator from Vermont, was not in a mood to pull punches. 'Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it,' he fumed in a statement last week. Such outbursts have been common in recent months as Sanders has taken up a leading position opposing Donald Trump's second term, and flagging his concern that the president is waging a war against the media – and winning. The reason for his ire last week was highly specific: a deal struck by Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS News, to pay Trump $16m in a donation to his presidential library, the archival centers that many presidents set up after they leave office. The settlement puts an end to the US president's lawsuit over the network's editing of an interview on 60 Minutes, the flagship CBS news magazine show, with then vice-president Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. Trump claimed – without any serious evidence – that the edit of the interview betrayed bias against him. 60 Minutes journalists countered – and nearly all other observers agreed – that it was just standard editing, common to all major interview segments. So then why settle? The key may lie with the fact that the super-wealthy Redstone family, which owns Paramount, is seeking to gain approval from Trump administration regulators for an $8bn deal to sell Paramount to the movie studio Skydance – a deal in which they stand to profit with a $2.4bn payday. 'Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media's editor-in-chief,' said lawyer Bob Corn-Revere of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. No wonder Sanders was mad. He has warned that the Paramount deal 'will only embolden' Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which the US president has repeatedly labeled 'the enemy of the people'. It was, Sanders said, a 'dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press'. Many would agree. For as Trump's second presidency has unfolded amid chaos, vast cuts to government spending and a rollback of civil liberties, his repeated and blistering attacks on the press have been one of the things most worrying those who fear for America's democratic health. The US media is now in a deep crisis of the sort that observers of creeping autocracy in places such as Hungary might find familiar. For the Paramount deal is not alone. The settlement follows another, six months ago, when Disney – which owns ABC News – put to bed a legal claim over how George Stephanopoulos, one of its top news anchors, described the president's sexual assault of the magazine writer E Jean Carroll. Again, the payment was $16m. He is even pursuing a legal claim against a relatively tiny newspaper for printing a poll he didn't like: Trump's lawsuit against the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer accuses her and the Des Moines Register of fraud, after she conducted a poll right before the 2024 election that showed Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a state which she did not ultimately win. Last week the Trump administration also threatened legal action against no less a news giant than CNN, over its reporting on an app that warns users of nearby immigration enforcement agents. As the administration continues its mass deportation efforts, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said her department and the Department of Justice are now examining the idea of prosecuting the network. 'We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them,' Noem said of CNN, 'because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations. We're going to actually go after them and prosecute them. What they're doing is illegal.' Trump then added, seemingly for good measure, that he believed the network's reporting on the success – or lack thereof – of the US bombing on Iran could also be examined. 'Our people have to be celebrated, [and] not come home to 'What do you mean we didn't hit the targets?'' Then he crystallised his entire approach: 'You have scum. CNN is scum. MSDNC [his insult for MSNBC] is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.' But if Trump is determined to wage a fierce crackdown on the press in the US, in some high-profile quarters it has been met with a distinct lack of resistance – especially from news organizations whose owners are billionaires or large corporations, keenly aware of Trump's control of the nation's regulators and their power to make or break a company's fortunes. Indeed, while the legal settlements with Trump represent a compromise of press freedoms, they may also represent an economic reality: that news outlets are more of a curse than a blessing to the multibillion-dollar media corporations that own them. The billionaire owners of both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post – the biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, respectively – have conspicuously moved their once-powerful newspapers closer to Trump and his Maga movement. Their opinion sections, both once fierce havens for Trump critics, have been the subject of particular attention by their owners – and the outraged resignation letters of staff have appeared to make little impact. 'A generation ago this would have seemed an outrageous story in the history of journalism,' said Bob Thompson, a media professor at Syracuse University. Not now in Trump's America. It is a two-pronged spear: even as Trump and his administration have launched an unprecedented attack, at the same time significant parts of the US media have seen its owners and power brokers often fold their hands. The head of Reporters Without Borders, Clayton Weimers, said: 'A line is being drawn between the owners of American news media who are willing to stand up for press freedom, and those who capitulate to the demands of the president.' Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said: 'Calling these 'settlements' doesn't quite capture what's happening. It's more like surrender – or even payoff.' The Trump administration has even signaled precisely that. Brendan Carr, Trump's handpicked chair for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – which holds the reins over whether the Redstone family gets its $2.4bn payday – said in an interview last year that 'the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction', referring to the Paramount-Skydance deal. The Democratic party, without power and shouting from the sidelines, is furious. The leftwing Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday called for an investigation into the Paramount settlement. 'With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,' Warren said in a statement. The settlement, she said, exposed 'a glaring need for rules to restrict donations to sitting presidents' libraries' – referring to the Trump entities that both ABC and CBS said their settlement payments would be directed – and added that 'the Trump administration's level of sheer corruption is appalling, and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism'. In May, Warren, Sanders and their fellow senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the Paramount CEO, Shari Redstone, cautioning her that 'under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act'. But prosecutors in the state of Delaware, where Paramount is incorporated, appear unlikely to open an investigation. Perhaps most chilling has been Trump's ongoing attack on the Associated Press, the news agency that is generally relied on to announce the winners and losers of individual elections, up to and including the presidency. When Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico renamed to 'Gulf of America', and the AP continued to use both names – noting that the rest of the world still uses the original – Trump jumped on it as a pretext to ban AP reporters from the White House. The AP has sued, but whatever the result, Trump's attempt to undermine the impartiality credentials of an organisation that is crucial to letting the American people know who their next president is may prove even more dangerous in the long run. And while AP remains banned, official coverage of White House activities has been opened to various new media individuals and groups with no history of impartial journalism at all, and who appear to be selected entirely for their willingness to ask Trump sycophantic questions. The political and legal assault could hardly have come at a worse time for American journalism, either, which is assailed by economic headwinds that would be challenging even under a more friendly administration. Scores of once healthy and powerful regional newspapers and television stations have declined or closed. News deserts have appeared all over the country. Big TV names – such as CNN and its rival MSNBC – are being jettisoned by the owners that once provided a safe haven for them, and few expect the good economic times to return as the rise of social media giants and artificial intelligence chokes off advertising and revenue streams for a public increasingly sceptical of mainstream media. Meanwhile, some of the fresh new digital startups that were meant to take their place have either shrunk themselves or been axed. Names such as BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Vice News that were once darlings of the digital media world are pale shadows of their former selves, unlikely to provide any sort of bulwark against Trump while mired in economic difficulties. One of the few booming parts of the US media landscape? Fox News, the Trump-boosting conservative channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family. 'Part of the various crises in journalism, from the business model to the interference of an aggressive presidential administration, is that so much of journalism are in fact little compartments in huge corporate entities for whom the standards of American journalism, the first amendment, the obligation to inform the citizenry in a republic, are not at the top of their priorities,' Thompson said. 'It's no surprise that we would have constant conflicts of interest when news organisations are owned by enormous, multivalent corporations that have got a lot of other interests besides telling the truth in journalism.' In this world, the Trump administration's role in the crisis of US journalism is not as singular villain, but as just one more factor in an area of American civic life that was already deeply ailing and standing near the edge of a cliff. Trump and his allies have just started pushing it closer. 'As it collapses before our very eyes, we might be surprised that it didn't happen a long time ago,' Thompson said.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘The American system is being destroyed': academics on leaving US for ‘scientific asylum' in France
It was on a US-bound flight in March, as Brian Sandberg stressed about whether he would be stopped at security, that the American historian knew the time had come for him to leave his home country. For months, he had watched Donald Trump's administration unleash a multipronged attack on academia – slashing funding, targeting international students and deeming certain fields and even keywords off limits. As his plane approached the US, it felt as though the battle had hit home, as Sandberg worried that he would face reprisals over comments he had made during his travels to the French media on the future of research in the US. 'It makes you think about what your status is as a researcher and the principle of academic freedom,' he said. 'Things have really changed … The entire system of research and higher education in the United States is really under attack.' Soon after, he became one of the nearly 300 researchers to apply for a French university's groundbreaking offer of 'scientific asylum'. Launched by Aix-Marseille University, the programme was among the first in Europe to offer reprieve to researchers reeling from the US crackdown on academia, promising three years of funding for about 20 researchers. Last week, Sandberg was revealed as one of the 39 researchers shortlisted for the programme. 'The American system is being destroyed at the moment,' he told the 80 reporters who turned up to meet the candidates. 'I think a lot of people in the United States and as well as here in Europe have not understood the level to which all of higher education is being targeted.' As reports began to emerge of funding freezes, cuts and executive orders targeting institutions across the Atlantic, institutions across Europe sprang into action, announcing plans to lure US-based academics. At Aix-Marseille University, hundreds of applications came in from researchers tied to institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Nasa, Columbia, Yale and Stanford. Three months after they launched their programme – named Safe Place for Science – the university said it had received more than 500 inquiries. It was a glimpse of the 'historic' moment the world was facing, said Éric Berton, the university's president. 'More than 80 years ago, as France was under occupation and repression, America welcomed exiled researchers, offering them a helping hand and allowing them to keep science alive,' he said. 'And now, in a sad reversal of history, some American scientists have arrived in France in search of a space for freedom, thought and research.' Last week, the university opened its doors, allowing reporters to meet a handful of the Americans who were in the final running to join the programme. As high-profile battles play out between universities such as Harvard and the White House, all of them asked that their institutions not be named, citing concerns that their employers could face reprisals. Some declined to speak to the media, while others asked that their full names not be used, offering a hint of how the Trump administration's actions are sowing anxiety among academics. 'The worry is that we've already seen that scientists are being detained at the border. Granted they're not US citizens, but they're even saying now that if you speak out against the government, they will deport you,' said a biological anthropologist who asked to be identified only as Lisa. 'And so I don't need anything against me at the moment until I can officially move here with my family.' Together the researchers painted a picture of a profession that had been plunged into uncertainty as the US government slashes spending on research grants and dismantles the federal institutions that manage and hand out funding. Months into Trump's second presidency, politics is increasingly blurring into academia as the government works to root out anything it deems as 'wokeism' from the post-secondary world. 'There's a lot of censorship now, it's crazy,' said Carol Lee, an evolutionary biologist, pointing to the list of terms now seen as off-limits in research grant applications. 'There are a lot of words that we're not allowed to use. We're not allowed to use the words diversity, women, LGBTQ.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion While the swift pace of change had left many nervous about what may lie ahead, many were not taking any chances. 'People are moving, for sure,' said Lee. 'A lot of top people have already moved to China. And China is laying out the red carpet. If people are getting an offer from Canada, people are moving to Canada.' For Lisa, the biological anthropologist, the reality of dismantling her life in the US and moving her husband, a schoolteacher, and their two kids across the Atlantic was starting to sink in. 'It's excitement, but it's nerve-racking,' she said. She knew she had to get out when it became clear that Trump had won a second term. Months later, she has found a potential path to do so, but is still wrapping her head around all that taking part in Aix-Marseille University's programme would entail. 'It is a big pay cut,' she said. 'My kids are super gung-ho. My husband is just worried that he won't find a job. Which is my worry too, because I don't think I'll be able to afford four of us on my salary.' But for her, and several others on the shortlist, the view was that there were few other options. 'It's a very discouraging time to be a scientist,' said James, a climate researcher who asked that his full name not be used. 'I feel America has always had a sort of anti-intellectual strain – it happens to be very ascendant right now. It's a relatively small proportion that doesn't trust scientists, but it's unfortunately a very powerful segment.' His wife had also been shortlisted for the same programme in southern France, leaving the couple on the brink of uprooting the lives and careers they had spent decades building in the US. 'I have very mixed feelings,' he said. 'I'm very grateful that we'll have the opportunity, but really quite sad that I need the opportunity.'
