Europe today faces a succession of major challenges. Some of the most daunting of these relate to climate change and its attendant ecological, societal, and economic impacts; continued and rapid globalization that easily outstrips the pace of change within political and legal institutions; growing pressure on welfare systems in countries characterized by aging populations and aggressive tax avoidance by elites and major corporations; the economic, security, and legal implications of increased automation and artificial intelligence; rising economic inequality; and the growing geopolitical influence of regimes that show scant concern for the protection of human rights.

Selecting which among these challenges will be the most significant is almost certainly an impossible task, not least because of the complex feedback loops already evident between a number of these issues. What we can say is that for Europe to respond to these issues effectively, and without major damage to its social and political fabric or harm to its citizens, European societies must also address two further challenges.

Lack of trust

First, is Europe able to rebuild trust in its public institutions? While there are important national and subnational variations, trust in key political institutions is worryingly low across much of Europe. In a 2018 YouGov poll, across the EU only 42 per cent of those polled said they trusted the EU, and just 34 per cent said that they trusted their national government. Such low levels of trust undermine the effective functioning of governments and other public institutions and hinder public participation in formal political processes. It also favors the politics of polarization and conflict, creating discursive opportunities for political entrepreneurs to claim foul play whenever events don't work out quite as they hoped, or promised – a tactic deployed frequently, although certainly not uniquely, by a number of leading Euroskeptic voices and parties around Europe.

Perhaps more worrying still, distrust of public institutions corrodes the hegemonic position of democracy itself. While support for overtly authoritarian forms of government remains low across Europe, public satisfaction with democracy in some countries is astonishingly low.