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Brussels Playbook Podcast
Who’s “European” — and who’s not?
00:32:37
We’re talking identity this week on EU Confidential — in more ways than one.
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- [00:02]
A
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit Red Bull.com BrightSummerAhead to learn more. See you this summer. Okay, I've been teasing you for weeks, and it's time to finally share my secret. This podcast is soon going to look a little different. There'll be a new name in your feed, new artwork. Our trademark red is being swapped for blue. New music, too. As of next week, EU Confidential becomes Brussels Playbook Weekender. The basic idea behind the show, its identity isn't changing. We'll still be taking a step back at the end of the week to make sense of Europe and where it's heading. We'll talk about that more later in the episode with a quick trip down memory lane with EU Confidential's very first host, Ryan Heath. So stay tuned. But actually, this transition felt strangely fitting for this week's conversation, because we're exploring identity, specifically European identity. How it evolves, how it survives crises, how it changes over time. For months, we've been talking about a Europe that feels tense, vulnerable, and under pressure from wars, geopolitical anxiety, migration, economic fears, all of it. And yet a new analysis suggests that in many countries, people actually feel more European than they used to. So what does European identity mean in 2026? Is it about culture, values? Race? How does that identity hold up when solidarity becomes costly and crises become real? And who gets included in that idea of Europe? And who, increasingly doesn't? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. To help me unpack all of this, I'm joined by Teresa Kuhn, professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She's led a major research project tracking how European identity has evolved across the continent over the past five decades. And what Europeans themselves actually mean when they say they feel, quote, European. Teresa, thank you for being here.
- [02:36]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:38]
A
For months on this podcast, we've been talking about how vulnerable Europe feels. Wars in Ukraine and Iran, energy anxiety, Trump attacking Europe and NATO. And yet your research suggests that people feel more European than they used to. How can both those things happen at once?
- [02:56]
B
Yeah, that's a super interesting paradox, actually. So when we look at the geopolitical situation, when we look at the many crises that Europe has been through, then you would in fact imagine that European identity is not doing very well, that people actually are not so sure anymore whether they feel European or feel connected to the eu. But actually our research just shows the opposite, that there has been an uptick of European, European identity over the past decades, and especially in these crisis times. And we were ourselves surprised by this result. But I think what is happening is that Europe is becoming more of a community of fate. So people are becoming much more aware that they are part of a bigger community that goes beyond their own countries and that actually these countries are interconnected. And if there is a big economic crisis in Greece or in Spain, then it has direct repercussions in other countries. Well, so it might not be the most enthusiastic identity. It might be more of a marriage of convenience, maybe, but people are definitely aware much more than before that they're part of this community.
- [04:07]
A
And before we get deeper into the findings and what they mean, can you just briefly explain what this research actually involved? I mean, it wasn't just a couple polls here and there.
- [04:15]
B
Yeah, indeed. So with my team, which included Armin Seimel and John Michaelis, Isabella Seberio and Darren Onarsal, we tried to get a much bigger picture of European identity development than previous research. And we were able to combine existing survey data across countries and across five decades of research. So basically we now have some kind of poll of poles. That's how you can imagine it, bringing together data since early 1970s until 2024 and from across the entire European Union, including the UK.
- [04:54]
A
And what do you even mean by European identity? Is it just being like pro eu?
- [04:59]
B
No, actually this is quite an important distinction. So people can, for example, think that the EU is maybe not really a good thing, or that they disagree with policy making of the European Union, but still feel connected to Europe as a community and also as a geographic continent, for example.
- [05:19]
A
And so we might have some people who are voting for Eurosceptic parties but still feeling European.
- [05:24]
B
Yeah, so, and this is a very interesting paradox, but I think we see this more and this has to do with a change in the way that Eurosceptic parties talk about Europe and also in a change in the way how people understand what European identity is all about. When we think of somebody who feels European or who identifies as European, we often have this stereotype of a person whose cosmopolitan, tolerant, speaking many different languages, you know, terrible, a European in a very open minded way. However, there is also a different understanding of European identity, which is much more based on civilizational terms. We are one European culture. Based on our Christian Judeo heritage, people need to be born in Europe to actually be part of it. So these are different visions of what it means to be European. And we currently see big debates about which one actually will win. So of course, for a long time we've had Eurosceptic parties that were hard Eurosceptics. They all wanted to leave the European Union. It was not only Brexit, it was also, you know, Nexit, Dxit, whatever, and they were basically completely against the eu. So this was a hard opposition. But what we're seeing now is a change in the strategy that far right parties actually use. And rather than wanting to leave the eu, they want to change it from the inside out and to basically make it more akin to their ideology. So they say, yes, we are European, but Europe is more community, based on a common culture of common ethnicity. And we're trying to push for policies that also reflect this. So let's think of migration policy being much stricter. And so for some people who see themselves as Europeans, but actually think more of Europe and European identity as something that is based on ethnicity, of being born here, etcetera, it is possible for them to feel European and at the same time subscribe to a much more right wing political ideology.
- [07:36]
A
And for this research, you and your colleagues have been asking people what it takes to be European and then also, who's not European? Tell us about some of the answers you got.
- [07:45]
B
Yeah, so basically what our overtime research could not do was to really look into what people actually mean when they think about a typical European, for example, or what they mean when they say, I feel European. And this is where the research of my PhD student, Isabella Seberio comes in. She actually asked people in a representative survey in Germany, so according to your own words, what does it take to be European? How does a typical European, what is it for you? And what she found there was quite striking. So first of all, for many Europeans, it's still very much about European democracy, rule of law, human rights. So very close to the, let's say, official discourse about the EU that has dominated politics for a long time. But there was also a significant portion of the population that said, no, it's actually more about being born here. It's about a certain ethnicity. Some really wrote down being white and not being Muslim. And what actually happens if we ask the question differently, if we ask, when are you not a European? This distinction became even, even much stronger. So people were then much more ready to say, well, being Muslim is not compatible with being European. And also you need to be born here. So people construct a relatively inclusive image when it comes about to what makes people European, they become much more exclusive and much more in a way linking it to ethnicity and to religion. When they talk about who's not European,
- [09:24]
A
well, that runs in parallel with another trend that you found. So, on the one hand, crises like the Russian invasion of Ukraine seemed to enhance and strengthen feelings of European identity, but at the same time, it was a bit more inside versus the outside. Can you talk through that phenomenon in a bit more detail?
- [09:44]
B
Yeah. In general, what we see is that crises have a positive effect on European identity, so that people become more aware of being European and supporting it during crisis times. It has to do with this community of faith that I said. But we also see that this kind of idea of an external threat and the common other plays a big role here. So we see, especially in crises with a clear external threat, whether it was real or whether it's just perceived as a different question. But let's think of, for example, Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also the migration crisis, which was very much framed as, okay, the threat is coming from outside and we have to basically shield ourselves. These are crises where European identity actually increased in the context of the crisis. We see this much less, for example, in the Eurozone crisis, which was much more perceived as failure of the EU to really solve a problem and which laid bare much more the internal divisions between member states and also a lot of stereotypes across the eu. So this did not have this effect on European identity. But the more external threat framed crises were playing a big role. This also means that in this context of external threat, European identity is more linked to security questions and to a Europe that protects. And because of that, I think we are moving much more to a connotation of European identity that is based much more on exclusive boundaries and a much clearer distinction between, okay, we are the positive, the aspirational in group, and then there's the others outside that we kind of have to shield ourselves against. Yeah.
- [11:33]
A
You invoked in your research former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell's, what was seen as sort of a gaffe saying, you know, the EU is the garden and the rest of the world is the jungle.
- [11:44]
B
Indeed, yes. So this was a very infamous speech, but I think it ties into a larger development not only by the far right, but also by the official EU institutions to move much more this rhetoric. Some people might also remember that Ursula von Der Leyen, in 2020, just before the Corona crisis erupted, she thanked Greece for being an aspida for being a shield against migration coming from outside of the eu. So also, these are very symbolic words that are not chosen just by mistake. I think they do reflect a change in the way European Union also, and also the institutions want to represent themselves.
- [12:25]
A
Yeah. It's interesting. She tried also during the COVID period to say, in contrast to Trump's vaccine nationalism, no Europe is going to help provide vaccines to the world as well as to ourselves. But yeah, that seemed to have not been as permanent of a posture.
- [12:41]
B
No, I think it was, of course, a time where a lot of things had to happen very quickly and a lot of improvisation was necessary. But especially when we look at the vaccine rollout, that was a moment, for example, when many people questioned the eu, because actually the UK was, you know, the first kind of. Exactly. And in some other research, with an international research team there, we actually did also find that just after the British vaccine rollout, support for the EU went down in European member states. So people were kind of thinking like, what's actually the added value of being in the EU if the UK can do it much faster?
- [13:21]
A
Really interesting. We've been also speaking kind of very broadly about trends, but are there big differences across Europe? Do Western and Eastern Europe broadly move in the same direction or do we see different trends?
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B
Yeah, it's difficult to really speak more generally about groups of countries. There are, however, some trends. So maybe not so surprisingly. Luxembourg is always the most pro European country in our data, always being half
- [13:49]
A
the country is employed by the eu.
- [13:52]
B
And it is also, of course, a small country. So I think it makes more sense to feel interconnected. What we see is that maybe in the founding countries, they already started out. So the founding six, we see a relatively high level of European identity that actually then maybe didn't increase so much. Whereas, for example, Scandinavia started with a relatively low level. I think they just joined the EU more for economic reasons, but then actually changed very much their mindset about feeling European. And we also see that in central Eastern European countries there was first this kind of almost honeymoon effect. You also see a little bit of an aspirational side of European identity. So very high levels, which then actually decreased in some countries. And I think this has also a lot to do with the way the eastern enlargement in 2004 and 2007 was actually handled and that that many citizens of these countries felt like second class citizens for a long time because, for example, there were still travel restrictions in place for them that were not in place for the rest of the eu. So I think their initial enthusiasm was actually tempered by the reactions of other Europeans towards them.
- [15:07]
A
Yeah, it's interesting to see sometimes there'll be a leap forward and then a step backward. So you found that expansion seemed to deflate European identity elsewhere. EU sentiment was below average in Ireland after the Eastern expansion in 2004, and in a lot of other places, the Maastricht Treaty, the treaty that basically created the European Union, that seemed to lead to a dip in some countries. So it seems like there's sort of this buyer's remorse or just struggle with accommodating the more intense practicalities of European integration. Yes.
- [15:40]
B
And in a way, it's not surprising. Right. I mean, Maastricht really was a big change, and you have to, in a way, also swallow that as a citizen. And this dip that we see here is part and parcel of a much bigger dip in public opinion towards the EU after the Maastricht Treaty. We call it the post Maastricht blues, actually, because in that time, for many Europeans, it became for the first time really clear, okay, this is not only about the market, this is a political union. And at that time, also Eurosceptic parties started to emerge and to mobilize these kind of sentiments. So it is really a turning point in public opinion towards the eu. Yeah.
- [16:18]
A
And we're still seeing this tension today just in Bulgaria. The country just adopted the euro, a huge kind of economic accomplishment for the country. But now citizens have just elected a government that's led by someone who is a bit of a euro skeptic, who's against the euro. So, yeah, it's still playing out.
- [16:37]
B
Absolutely, yeah. I'm not an expert on Bulgarian politics, I should say, but I think there are often these kind of. Of contradictions that you see here. And what is quite interesting about your, you know, the Euro adoption is in earlier research with Francesco Nicoli and Fedra Negri, we could show that in the long term, having the euro actually does increase European identity. So compared to countries that actually don't have it, because, you know, you have a symbol of the EU and of European integration in your pockets, basically. And that basically reminds people that they're part of the eu. So I guess in the long term, Bulgaria might. Might become more positive about it.
- [17:20]
A
Yeah, it's that it's a kind of hazing period where people have to adjust. On the other hand, is there a risk that we're overstating how deep this identity is? It's one thing to say I feel European and even to appreciate the advantage of a common currency in your pocket, but it's another when you have to act on it, when solidarity gets expensive. If the Portuguese were asked to help defend the Polish border, or if Germans were to pay off Greek debt, something they were bracing for, would they still see themselves as European?
- [17:49]
B
Yes, absolutely. That's the big stress test. So, on the one hand, economic redistribution, which we have seen very much arise in the eurozone crisis and also in the Corona crisis, but you're now also relating to basically going to war for other member states. And these are of course, big decisions where identity also plays a big role. I cannot say so much about really, the hopefully hypothetical case of going to war for other member states in the European army. What we have seen in research on European solidarity in the euro crisis is that we all, including people who have a strong European identity, we all prefer to basically keep the money in our own countries. And this has a lot to do with the national welfare institutions. It has a lot to do with trust also. But what we also see is that for people who have a European identity, the threshold is much lower. So they are more easily convinced that you can also give money to other member states or to other Europeans. And what we also see here is that there is really also a lot of power or a lot of leeway for policymakers in the way they design these policies. So, for example, if you show citizens, okay, well, we do have some kind of redistribution distribution scheme, but there are clear conditions for member states to actually get the money. And if they don't fulfill these conditions, then they're out. Then you see that public opinion shifts. So I think, yes, there is possibility for it, but also, really, policy design and communication, how do you frame it? Is it just, you know, giving money to some lazy other European countries that don't have their money in order, or is it something that we do to help others in a difficult situation? So these two questions play a big role. How do you design the policies and how do you communicate them? And then I think many Europeans can actually be convinced to also give something up of themselves, either money or hopefully not their lives for others.
- [20:00]
A
Yeah, and I think you've just articulated sort of a broad formula for creating a sense of. Of solidarity internally in a difficult situation. And I'm going to ask you a very subjective question based on my American identity, which still feels dominant for me, even though I've been here for almost a decade, and I hold Belgian citizenship as well, and the country where I was born and raised, despite all its divisions, self identifies as powerful, it has agency in the world, whereas in Europe we're just staring at the Strait of Hormuz, hoping that the fighting ends and that the problem will go away, even though it affects us here even more than in the U.S. so, so we have this shared fate. But that's exactly it. It's, it's fatalistic and passive instead of decisive. So can there be an empowered European identity?
- [20:53]
B
Yeah, super interesting question, Sarah. And actually to be honest, on the way here, I was wondering myself whether you see yourself as European or primarily American. So thanks for the answer to my question.
- [21:04]
A
I'm going to get hate mail.
- [21:05]
B
But yeah, I think Europe is underestimating its own power. And I think important way forward would be to actually be much more proud of what the EU has achieved in terms of providing an alternative to very much power based or hegemony international relations. And much more actually trying to solve interstate negotiations, much more through collaboration and cooperation. And I think, for example, in the reaction to the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the EU was very, very strong and very clear in the initial phase in showing their reaction to it and being unified. And this is much less the case in the last couple of crises that we have seen. I think Europe is still trying to find the leader that could actually provide this kind of energy that we need to really be more, to have more self esteem in international relations. We're currently not seeing this, but I think the EU clearly has the potential for it.
- [22:13]
A
All right, Theresa Kuhn, thank you so much for joining us.
- [22:16]
B
Thank you.
- [22:19]
A
Okay, that was Professor Teresa Kuhn from the University of Amsterdam. We'll take a quick break now and when we come back, a little bit more on the identity question. Not European identity this time, but the identity of this podcast. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money
- [22:45]
B
side to every story.
- [22:47]
A
Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com. Okay, now it's time to get a bit personal about this show. Back in February, we launched the Brussels Playbook podcast. Our daily 15 minute show running Monday through Thursday, focused on the biggest stories shaping your Europe each morning. And now this Friday show is officially joining the family with a new name, a new look and yes, a new color palette. But as I've said, the core idea behind it isn't changing. I'll still be here with you every Friday in the same feed trying to make sense of Europe at the end of another busy week with the deeper Conversations, reporting and analysis you've come to expect from EU Confidential over the years, plus frequent high level interviews conducted by my colleague Anne McAvoy. Two and a half years ago, I inherited the host mic once helmed by the likes of Andrew Gray and Suzanne Lynch. And today I'm joined by the person who hosted the original EU confidential when it first launched back in 2017, Ryan Heath. Ryan was also the original author of the Brussels Playbook newsletter and he'll soon be heading to Australia to write a new Politico newsletter there. Ryan, great to have you here.
- [24:06]
C
It is so good to be back. I'm loving all of the new podcasts
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A
sort of back, but like, you didn't have this nice fancy studio back when you started you Confidential?
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C
Absolutely not. We had the most crazy audio challenges. We were doing it in a glass box. I was buying little foam pads off the Internet and we were placing them all around. None of these fancy microphones with extender arms. Absolutely nothing like that at all.
- [24:29]
A
And we went back and listened to that first episode and, and that just seems to capture how much things have changed since 2017. What were the big topics?
- [24:36]
C
Well, it was all Brexit and terrorism and one crisis or another. It was a multi back to back crisis era. And certainly people had the patience maybe for a 30 or 40 minute podcast then. A little bit different now. So we took up a lot of your time back then that was very
- [24:53]
A
different, but we still take up a good amount of people's time here at what is now the Weekender. So over the three years that you hosted, what was your favorite episode?
- [25:01]
C
I love doing the live ones. So I'm a big advocate of having that audience in the room. And among those ones, my favorites I think, were Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon. Like they were very authentic people and they're the sort of people that you love to interview because they give you real answers.
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A
So this is the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland.
- [25:23]
C
And there was one more, Martin Sellmeier. I had never actually spoken to Martin Sellmeyer. People will be shocked to learn that. So he was clearly the big man behind Jean Claude Juncker. And it was a very different feeling when Politico first turned up in Brussels. So I did not have the access that a lot of people have today to the commission. And Martin Silmeier and I had never had a conversation until I interviewed him after the 2019 election.
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A
He came onto the podcast.
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C
Well, he did an event with us and we turned it into a podcast episode.
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A
Okay, well, listen, we do a lot of comparisons of Martin Sellmeyer and Bjorn Zeibert. So Bjorn, I also have never met you. So this is the moment. This is the moment. So I am. I was a longtime fan girl of you Confidential before getting the pleasure of hosting. And my favorite part of the Ryan Heath era was the EU WTF segment.
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C
Me too.
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A
And it was. It was basically like an advice thing. You had Lena Obarus and Alva Finn, two women in the EU bubble, helping give advice. What was your favorite segment of that one?
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C
It was always people having some little trauma to do with their rent or sometimes very seriously being harassed in some way. Because it was also the Me Too era. But my favorite story was really when the European General Court decided to fine itself for basically failing to process a case for 26 months. They admitted that for 26 months they did absolutely nothing with this case. And then it took them another two years to deal with it. And I can't remember who was awarded all of this money, but I just thought it was so absurd because there's really not much to do in Luxembourg and people say Brussels is boring. But if anyone really thinks that, get yourself down to Luxembourg and then tell me, what would you do in 26 months in Luxembourg if not deal with your court case that was in front of you?
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A
And yet they did not.
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C
And they did not.
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A
Any advice that you actually followed from that?
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C
Oh, I just thought it was fun. I just liked this idea of not shocking the bubble, but making people see themselves a little bit differently or realize not everybody is on the low tax rate at the commission. There are a bunch of interns struggling to survive in the town. Or okay, it might be a bunch of old guys running a lot of things, but I thought it really mattered to have female voices on the podcast. And I worked really hard to make sure that there was this cross section of people in the town who were part of it all.
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A
Yeah, you know, we talk about the faceless bureaucrats, and we were at least giving voice to different people here on the podcast.
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C
Yeah. And Laughing Matters. So I wanted to make people laugh at some level, too. Well, there's a lot that happens in the world of EU politics. Sarah, did you have a favourite way of bringing that news to people in the podcast? Are you an interview person? Are you a chat person? What stands out to you?
- [28:10]
A
I love a good talking head panel. I'm a bit of an addict. And the thing that I've loved about the podcast is that if I wanted to understand more about some complicated thing in the eu. Like I could just get some people on the podcast to talk about it. And I've hoped to bring that same vibe to people. So, like, I didn't understand why the EU was putting duties on cheap Chinese electric vehicles when we're supposed to be like, pursuing this green deal. Don't we want people to have access to, to cheap electric cars? So I got a climate reporter in here, I got a trade reporter in here. There are some conflicting goals and they were able to lay that out for everybody. And nerdily enough, that is my favorite episode of you Confidential.
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C
And when it's a conversation, you can't default to all these acronyms and process driven things because that's not how normal people talk. So you have to bring it into a different level and open it up, I guess.
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A
Exactly. We really humanize the things here.
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C
And, you know, I don't want to be backward looking too much because there's a bright new future to the podcast, but there are recurring themes in our world. Donald Trump has not gone away. Ukraine has been under occupation the entire time EU Confidential has existed to one extent or another. What do you feel about those recurring themes? And do you think that we'll be able to go on to new topics and new challenges and new crises?
- [29:29]
A
I mean, look, history echoes and we just keep seeing the same thing over and over again. I think it's especially in the era of Trump. So we see Europe struggling with this fading transatlantic relationship. We also see Europe want to move in sort of a green direction, but then a crisis kind of leads leaders to say, no, you know, we need to solve short term problems. And that means we need to find ways to lower costs. And that usually involves hitting the brakes on certain climate policies. The new thing, though, that I have seen over the course of this podcast existence is the rise of the far right, not just in the capitals, but in the European Parliament. There used to be just this kind of mono thinking, you know, this kind of centrist grand coalition here. And especially after the 2024 European Parliament election, the Patriots for Europe group, third biggest group in the European Parliament, were now grappling with the idea that Marine Le Pen could be at the council table next year. And that is changing the narrative.
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C
And it's a real road to respectability in a sense where I'm old enough or been around long enough to know when the Freedom Party in Austria first was brought into a coalition and then people flipped the table here, they couldn't cope with the idea of that level of Euroscepticism or nationalism. And now it's almost part of the furniture. But even though people are able to express their anger and frustrations, and they have been in numbers of ways, elections force you to make hard choices. And there's going to be a bunch of elections coming up over the next year where the real test is, is it frustration going to get converted into votes, which gets converted into council seats, or does it just peter out at the level of frustration?
- [31:14]
A
We definitely are not going to run out of things to talk about here on THE Weekender. And Ryan will certainly be checking back in with you from Australia.
- [31:20]
C
With pleasure.
- [31:23]
A
Okay, that's it from us. Thanks as always to our supervising producer, Deanna Sterris and to our audio producer, Saga Ringmar. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week on THE weekender.