Since 2019, the Institute for Human Sciences and the Erste Foundation have sponsored an annual Speech for Europe. The speech is always timed to coincide with the opening of the Wiener Festwochen, Vienna’s annual cultural festival, and is on or near Europe Day, which is also the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
The speech is held outdoors, on Judenplatz, the centre of the Viennese Jewish community during the Middle Ages and the site of an important Holocaust memorial today. Entry is free and the audience stands to listen. Hopefully it does not rain.
This year, Anne Applebaum gave the speech. American readers might note that she speaks here as a European and offers advice to Europeans. This is because she has a Polish passport, acquired in 2013, but also because she considers herself to be a patriotic citizen of the transatlantic alliance that America built together with Europe more than eighty years ago. She also believes that the ideas and values behind the American, Polish and British constitutions are the same.
Why Europe Still Gathers to Remember
Applebaum began with a question for the audience: why are you here? Why did you take time out on a Wednesday night to come to Judenplatz to hear a “Speech for Europe”? Why did you want to join this annual tradition?
She suggested two possible motives. First, many people came because they remember the catastrophe that engulfed Vienna, Austria and the European continent during the Second World War, more than eighty years ago. They understood that a lecture in this place would recall the history of war, the Holocaust, hatred and hunger, and would honour the memory of the victims.
Secondly, she suggested that many in the audience fear that some version of that catastrophe might return. If that is true, they are part of a long tradition. Since 1945, several generations of Europeans have worked hard to prevent another disaster like the Second World War. They wrote history books, built monuments and organised events such as this one.
Rule of law — the principle that all people, institutions and governments are accountable under publicly known laws, applied equally and independently. In Europe, it is one of the foundations of liberal democracy and post-war political order.
The Institutions Built After Catastrophe
Europeans also reorganised their societies. As Austrians reconstructed Vienna and other Europeans rebuilt Paris and Berlin, they were not simply putting things back as they had been. Surrounded by rubble, they decided to build something new: institutions designed to promote liberal democracy, the rule of law, cooperation between states, economic integration and, eventually, a single market for trade.
These institutions were intended both to promote prosperity and to prevent the return of the imperial and genocidal ambitions that had done such damage to Vienna and to many other cities. Instead of returning to rivalries, protectionism and warring armies, Europeans created the European Union and other organisations that connected them to one another and to the world through commerce, trade, travel and diplomacy.
The Europe that emerged from this process represents an enormous achievement, one with no real parallel elsewhere. Thanks to the efforts of the post-war generation, Europe is safer, richer and more peaceful than ever before in its history. European countries are also more sovereign. Thanks to eight decades of collective deterrence, Europeans have been able to develop their own national cultures within a framework of peace instead of perpetual war.
Thanks to the European Union, Europeans can preserve their art, literature and architecture, including the buildings that surround Judenplatz. Readers following the wider European and global agenda can also explore the World News section of 100% NEWS.
The Danger of Taking Peace for Granted
This success has a downside. Because these institutions worked so well, people began to imagine that they were not the result of hard work and difficult compromises, but something natural — merely “bureaucracies” that emerged by themselves. Because Europe had eighty years of peace, people started taking the laws and norms that ensure peace for granted.
For those who came because they fear that these institutions are again in danger, Applebaum’s answer was clear: they are correct. At this moment, these institutions are indeed under attack.
The Revival of Old Ideas
The challenge comes first from within European and North American societies. Across Europe and North America, discarded texts, forgotten concepts and dimly remembered theories are being revived by people who do not remember why they were discredited three generations ago.
Many have adopted old attitudes towards parliamentary democracy and now channel the same contempt for elections that the autocrats of the twentieth century once expressed. Lenin dismissed parliaments as nothing more than “bourgeois democracy”. Hitler called parliamentary democracy “one of the gravest symptoms of human decline”. When European politicians speak of the “degeneracy” of democracy or the “weakness” of liberalism, it is worth remembering that these same words were used in the 1930s by groups describing themselves as both Left and Right.
Some are also rediscovering old political tactics, including the idea that politics should focus not on consensus, but on building an existential and potentially violent distinction between “friends” and “enemies”. They may not know that this idea comes from the German philosopher Carl Schmitt, who was popular in the Third Reich and dismissed liberal politics as a sham.
Hybrid warfare — the use of military, cyber, political, economic, informational and covert tools together to weaken an opponent without relying only on conventional warfare.
Other ideas have also returned. Ethnic nationalism, the belief that nations are better if they are somehow purer, however purity is defined, is back. So is theocracy or dominionism: the belief that the only good societies are those run by the church. So is an older idea of sovereignty, a vision of the state that gives all power to a ruler or ruling party that is, by definition, immune from criticism even when leaders violate the rights of their subjects.
The downgrading of human rights as sentimental and weak is also an old idea. The replacement of news-gathering and fact-checking with propaganda has happened before, as have attempts to control and manipulate access to information. The creation of scapegoats — minority groups blamed for economic losses or social distress — is a political tactic that has been tried many times.
The Threat from Russia
These ideas are European ideas, and they come from European history. But they are also being reinforced from outside Europe. They are heard, for example, from Russian propaganda used to justify military, cyber and hybrid attacks on Europe.
Russia’s war on Ukraine is sometimes described as if it were merely a territorial dispute or a scuffle over lines on a map. But when Russia denies that Ukraine is a real nation, builds concentration camps on occupied Ukrainian territory, bans the Ukrainian language, and systematically arrests mayors, teachers, journalists and priests, Russia is also attacking the Europe built after 1945 — the Europe whose borders are not supposed to be changed by force.
Russia invaded Ukraine not only to destroy Ukraine, but also to prove that treaties are meaningless, alliances are weak and brute force still decides the fate of nations. By waging an imperialist war of conquest, Russia seeks to undermine Europe’s post-imperial order.
In this sense, the Russian attack on Ukraine is also an attack on the European Union. Europeans may imagine that the EU is merely a bureaucratic inconvenience. But the Russians have never believed that. On the contrary, the Russian president has long understood that when Europe is unified, it can resist Russian influence and Russian corruption. When Europeans are divided, they find it far more difficult to turn down Russian offers of special treatment or lucrative secret deals.
That is why, for two decades, Russian propagandists have belittled the Union, mocked its institutions and portrayed it as decadent, divided, overregulated or doomed. Their policy is not limited to words or memes. They also seek actively to create chaos and division.
Applebaum pointed to sabotage, drones, assassinations and covert action as part of this wider campaign. Russian money also backs European political parties and leaders whose victories would limit Europe’s ability to defend European territory. Russia funds or amplifies anti-European parties and separatist movements because it wants to replace the Europe of law with a Europe tolerant of kleptocracy: a Europe in which each country can be separately pressured, threatened or bought.
For additional analysis of Ukraine’s strategic role and European security, readers may visit the Ukraine section of 100% NEWS.
The Challenge from the United States
In another version of this speech, one that might have been given two or three years earlier, Applebaum would have spoken about how European and American leaders need to work together against Russia’s military and ideological threat, and how they should defend liberal democracy and the rule of law together.
But she argued that Europe must acknowledge what is now happening in Washington, because the United States under the current administration is no longer interested in leading democratic coalitions against Russia or anyone else. Democracy, she argued, is no longer at the centre of US foreign policy or of America’s identity. Instead, Donald Trump has begun to align US foreign and domestic policies with the values and practices of the autocratic world.
This shift is visible in domestic policy and in the administration’s attempts to strip funding from USAID and Radio Free Europe, institutions that once promoted democracy around the world. But it is also visible in the president’s relationships with Washington’s historic allies. From his first days in office, President Trump verbally attacked Canada, the European Union and America’s Asian partners, placing high tariffs on their goods. He shouted at the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office, threatened to annex Greenland by force, claimed that the EU was created to “screw” the US, and echoed Putin in calling NATO a “paper tiger”.
In a break with previous post-war administrations, Trump has negotiated with Russia not only to bring a just peace to Ukraine or security to Europe, but in order to help US businesses profit from the lifting of Russian sanctions.
The War of Ideas Inside the West
Some members of the Trump administration have also entered the war of ideas. In Munich, the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, declared that America and Europe are bound together not by values or a commitment to democracy, but by “Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry” — by blood, soil, DNA and the distant past, rather than the present or future.
Although that speech praised Dante, Shakespeare, Mozart and the “vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel”, Rubio, like Putin, condemned modern Europe as a continent overwhelmed by migrants, crime and decay.
Vice President JD Vance, speaking in Budapest, also praised European architecture, but condemned the “faceless bureaucrats” of the EU for allegedly intervening in Hungary’s elections. He did so while speaking at a campaign event, while himself intervening in Hungary’s elections on behalf of Viktor Orbán.
Applebaum argued that these speeches were not outliers. They represented the Trump administration’s policy, as presented in the National Security Strategy published at the end of the previous year. That document made clear that, although the United States would no longer intervene to promote democracy in the world, it is now American policy to “help Europe correct its current trajectory”, language that implies the US will intervene directly in European politics.
Sovereignty — the authority of a state or political community to govern itself. In the digital age, sovereignty is also affected by control over data, platforms, networks, infrastructure and technological standards.
According to reports published at the time, an earlier version of the document was more specific. It allegedly called on US diplomatic and security institutions to support illiberal forces in Hungary, Poland, Italy and Austria, with the goal of persuading them to leave the European Union. For those countries, this would be an economic catastrophe, just as Brexit was for Britain. For Europe as a whole, the prospects would be deeply damaging.
A weakened EU would struggle to counter Russian hybrid warfare, let alone a Russian military attack. A fragmented Europe would quickly lose sovereignty and find it impossible to compete in a world dominated by the United States and China.
Technology, Power and European Independence
Applebaum also drew attention to the commercial dimension of this political shift. Russian and American motives are different, but both ultimately care not only about ideology, but also about their own commercial interests.
JD Vance, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, she argued, understand that the European Commission is the only body large enough to regulate digital platforms, demand transparency from them and insist that private power be subject to public rules. In that context, support for anti-EU political leaders is also linked to a desire to weaken or destroy the European Union as a regulatory force.
Europe therefore faces pressure from two sides. On one side stands a rearmed and radicalised Russian regime that is already using sabotage, propaganda and military threats to influence European politics. On the other side stands a radicalised movement inside the US administration that defines European societies as a civilisational enemy.
For different reasons, both favour a weaker and more fragmented Europe. The Russians want a Europe that cannot defend itself militarily. The Americans want a Europe that is dependent on American technology and therefore vulnerable to American political control.
Europe Can Choose to Build
In the face of this challenge, Europeans can give up. They can let US negotiators prolong the war in Ukraine, allow business deals with Russia to replace a peace that would help Europe, and watch as American and Russian actors amplify anti-European political movements.
Or Europe can choose something different. It can fight back not by talking, but by building. Applebaum pointed to the French and Taiwanese as examples of those beginning to collaborate on alternative technologies that could serve not only Europe, but the democratic world as a whole.
Instead of getting information from platforms designed to divide and exploit, Europe could found and fund new companies and change the rules that govern them. Transparency could replace obscurity. Customers of social media platforms could own their own data and determine what happens to it. They could influence the algorithms that determine what they see. Legislators in democracies could create the technical and legal means to give people more control and more choices, or hold companies liable if the algorithms they use promote terrorism, racism or child pornography.
In this context, the future of Europe is not only military or diplomatic. It is also technological, legal, economic and cultural. Related business and geopolitical analysis is available in the Business section of 100% NEWS.
Europe’s Advantages in an Unpredictable World
Applebaum argued that Europe must lean into its achievements. Europe remains an oasis of security, stability and the rule of law. It has independent courts that strive not to be mere mouthpieces of whoever is in power. Europe keeps its word. It respects contracts. The continent respects science, reads history, cares about culture and is mindful of the lessons of the past.
These qualities should be used to make Europe a magnet for investment, innovation and people with new ideas. Predictability is an advantage in a world of unpredictable powers.
To capitalise on those advantages, Europe must change some policies and priorities. It needs to put more money into new European defence technology companies, some inspired by the technological progress of Ukrainians and some working directly with them. It needs to invest in European social media platforms and European AI, with European values built into them. It needs European data stored on this side of the Atlantic. It needs a capital markets union so that Europe’s full economic potential can be reached. It needs to think and act like the world’s most powerful economic zone.
Sovereignty in the Digital Age
These steps are necessary to protect European sovereignty, so that decisions about Europe are made in Europe. In an earlier era, sovereignty was measured in armies, borders and industrial strength. Today, it must also be measured in networks, platforms and engineering talent.
If the infrastructure of democratic debate is owned elsewhere, governed elsewhere and answerable to private interests elsewhere, then formal independence becomes meaningless. Those who use the word sovereignty to mean isolationism and protectionism are making a mistake. A nation may have elections, a legal system and carefully controlled borders, yet still find that its public sphere is shaped by systems it neither understands nor controls.
What Is European Civilisation?
Applebaum ended by addressing nostalgic appeals to Western civilisation that are now heard from US politicians and ideologues, as well as from many Europeans. She said that she cares deeply about the past, but wants Europe to remember more of it.
Yes, Europeans built beautiful and eternal cathedrals and city squares. But European civilisation is not just a backdrop for Instagram influencers. Europeans also built the ideas that form the basis of liberal democracy after centuries of religious war, dictatorship and genocide.
A truer definition of European or Western civilisation includes not only flying buttresses, but also the rule of law, the separation of powers, judicial independence, freedom of speech, equality before the law and the idea that governments are accountable to citizens. These ideas are no less part of Europe’s inheritance than its literature or architecture.
Indeed, they are what make Europe’s cultural inheritance more than a museum collection. They allow free people to read Dante differently, argue about Shakespeare openly, attend whichever churches or cathedrals they choose, criticise their rulers without fear and change governments without bloodshed.
You cannot celebrate European civilisation while simultaneously attacking the legal and political order invented here, or while seeking to undermine the institutions that protect pluralism and dissent. Anyone who does so is defending the shell of that civilisation, not its substance.
Old Ideas Can Be Made New Again
Europe is living through a moment of great change, as significant and consequential as the end of communism in 1989. But Applebaum argued that Europe can make that shift work in its favour.
Europeans are tied together by shared history, both good and bad; by shared art and culture; by shared religions; and by shared religious tolerance, an idea invented in Europe in the eighteenth century and later exported to the United States.
Europe did invent divisive and ugly ideas, and it can retrieve them from the past. But the texts that led to the birth of classical liberalism were also written in Europe. They can be found, revived and reinterpreted for the present. Europe is not condemned to the brutal world of Carl Schmitt or Lenin. It can choose something different.
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