Europe Is Stronger Than Its Critics Predicted

By Fenja Tramsen

Thursday, May 07, 2026

 

The pessimists of recent years had good evidence that the European project was weakening.

 

Brexit shattered the myth of irreversible integration, and in the same vein, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary became a vetocracy inside the bloc’s own walls. Orban’s anti-European Union legacy, which included blocking EU sanctions and obstructing aid packages, regularly complicated European Council decisions that required unanimity.

 

Throughout the 2000s, the bloc’s enlargement efforts stalled, with candidate countries in the western Balkans waiting for a decade or more for their applications to advance. Simultaneously, the far right surged in the 2024 European Parliament elections, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally winning around 31 percent of the French vote, the AfD becoming the second-largest party in Germany’s legislature, and Italy’s Brothers of Italy more than doubling its seats. The scholars who warned that the European project was losing its gravitational pull were simply following the available data. As one senior fellow at Carnegie Europe put it in 2025, “the EU today looks weak and powerless.”

 

But that sentiment now needs to be read alongside newer developments and data from the last year, which, taken together, suggest European integration is strengthening once again. None of these developments is without complication, but together they are harder to dismiss than any one of them in isolation.

 

The most dramatic development is the most recent. Hungarian voters delivered a crushing rebuke to Orbán last month, ending his 16-year grip on power. Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party secured 141 of 199 parliamentary seats on 53 percent of the vote, while Orbán’s Fidesz party took just 52 seats. Turnout exceeded 78 percent, a record in any Hungarian election since the fall of communism. The win gives Magyar the constitutional authority to reverse many of Orbán’s controversial and institutional policies, rather than simply governing around them. Analysts at the think tank German Marshall Fund noted that Magyar’s win overcame both foreign influence and united an ideologically diverse coalition by focusing on restoration and economic opportunity rather than cultural battles. Specifically, Magyar framed Hungary’s economic decline, poor EU relations, and frozen funds as resulting from Orban’s poor governance and anti-democratic policies. That framing landed well with an electorate exhausted by 16 years of increasingly corrupt and pro-Russian domestic politics.

 

The implications of Orbán’s removal are substantial for the EU, since Hungary had blocked sanctions against Russia, obstructed a 90 billion euro loan package for Ukraine, and frustrated dozens of European Council decisions. As a consequence of Hungary’s illiberalism and anti-democratic sentiments, the EU froze more than 16 billion euros allocated to Hungary over failures on judicial independence, rule of law, and corruption. Unlocking those EU funds will be one of Magyar’s first priorities. A priority for the EU will be ensuring Hungary can undo the anti-democratic policies set by Orbán, such as weakening the Constitutional Court and heavily censoring the media. Evidence from Poland shows this is possible, since Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition defeated a similarly entrenched government in 2023. Hungary has begun to follow in these steps, and that matters as a rebuttal to the argument that authoritarian consolidation inside the EU is irreversible.

 

A second development is less visible but arguably more structurally significant. In early 2025, the EU launched the ReArm Europe plan, unlocking up to 800 billion euros in defense spending by suspending fiscal rules to allow national budgets to expand. This is a significant shift, and it reflects what the Eurobarometer (the EU’s public opinion survey) had already signaled at the level of public sentiment, with 79 percent of EU citizens supporting a common defense and security policy.

 

Another, earlier move in this direction was the Kensington Treaty, signed by United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in London last July. It is the first bilateral treaty between the U.K. and Germany since the end of World War II, covering defense, economic ties, migration, science and research, and people-to-people contacts. The treaty is particularly important amid the U.S. decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, signaling increasingly unreliable American security backing.

 

Merz’s visit came after a state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, during which France and the U.K. pledged to coordinate their nuclear deterrents. The think tank Chatham House described the outcome as putting the U.K., Germany, and France back at the heart of European security. Despite Brexit, those three nations are re-emerging as a primary driver of the continent’s defense architecture, pushed together by Russian aggression and American strategic unpredictability.

 

The third shift is slower-moving but arguably the most consequential in the long run. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine jolted EU enlargement out of its decade-long stalling, repositioning it as a security imperative. Currently, the European Commission has stated that Montenegro and Albania will (potentially) have closed accession negotiations by 2028. Ahead of the Balkan states are Romania and Bulgaria, which completed their full Schengen accession (the EU's passport-free travel area) in January 2025, alongside Bulgaria joining the Eurozone, the EU’s single currency. Current discussions in Brussels include introducing more flexible arrangements for candidate countries, which would allow them to integrate into specific EU policies and market areas prior to receiving full membership status. Now, the removal of Hungary’s blocking power means accession may speed up further still.

 

Against the complications of enlargement sits a public opinion picture more favorable to European integration than at any point in recent memory. The spring 2025 Eurobarometer recorded the highest level of trust in the EU in 18 years, with 52 percent of Europeans saying they trust the institution and 75 percent feeling they are citizens of the EU. By the autumn survey, nearly three-quarters said their country had benefited from membership. A special Eurobarometer on enlargement found 56 percent in favor of further expansion, with support particularly high among younger Europeans. In candidate countries, the figures are more striking still, with 91 percent of Albanian citizens supporting accession and 68 percent and 74 percent of Ukrainian and Georgian citizens, respectively.

 

In short, Russia’s invasion created a security emergency that shifted accession into an urgent—rather than merely desirable—issue. The EU has not become more attractive on its own merits so much as the outside world has become more threatening.

 

That distinction is important because the pro-European mood is contingent on external factors rather than internally consolidated, which is problematic amid rising populism and right-wing sentiments. For instance, France’s National Rally has consistently led polls ahead of the 2027 presidential election, while the AfD has at times topped German polls since February 2025. A far-right, Euroskeptic French presidency would transform the EU’s internal balance of power far more profoundly than Orbán’s attempts. In simple terms, a French government actively hostile to EU institutions and enlargement, wielding a nuclear deterrent and a seat on the United Nations Security Council, would pose a challenge of a different magnitude. However, Magyar’s win in Hungary (and Tusk’s in Poland) does show that populist consolidation is not permanent and that a campaign built on anti-corruption and economic policy can win against Euroskeptics like Orbán.“Europe’s heart is beating stronger in Hungary tonight,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen following Orbán’s defeat. That beat is perhaps just as strong in more places than the pessimists expected.