The welfare state and Europe's malaise

European societies are experiencing a profound malaise that is difficult to summarize. It is economic, but also cultural, generational, and territorial. It translates into a feeling that the promises of democracy are either late or never fulfilled. And it is this context that cynics and populists exploit to erode trust in institutions and portray migrants, feminists, or Brussels as the scapegoats.

In this magma of frustrations, the thread that links many different experiences and makes them politically explosive is that, in the last twenty years, the European Union has been accepting a level of inequality that we would have previously found intolerable.

It is true that, from day one, European integration has been a combination of idealism and self-interest: "never again war," but also markets to protect, interests to preserve, and prejudices that are hard to overcome. But today, in the EU, the richest 1% has five times more wealth than the entire bottom 50%; in 1960, that gap was less than half.

The narrative justifying European integration has also changed. The initial mission was to neutralize wars with shared prosperity: the welfare state. When peace in Europe seemed irreversible (and even Ukraine appeared so), the mission shifted to managing the benefits of globalization: the single market, the euro, and the free movement of capital and goods. Now we know the extent to which globalization, in addition to its benefits, also creates losers, and these losers have the right to feel represented.

The paradox is that what matters most in daily life—health, education, decent work, housing—is precisely where the European Union has the least legal authority and the least direct legitimacy. Harmonizing banking regulations or energy markets is relatively easy; guaranteeing decent minimum wages, fair taxation for multinationals, or sustainable hospital funding is much less so.

The result is a Europe perceived as powerful where it inspires fear (financial regulation, fiscal discipline) and weak precisely where citizens would like it to be strong. We have built economies that generously reward transactions and undervalue care work, and we speak of fiscal orthodoxy and competitiveness as if they were laws of physics. Europe does not live in an oasis: it needs productive companies to sustain the welfare state. But competition is a prerequisite; distribution is a choice: under the same global rules, some countries concentrate more wealth than others. The difference is not made by the market, but by collective decisions, and that is why the European Union must serve this purpose.

There are areas where this contradiction is particularly blatant. For example, women's health: what are we to think of institutions that are outraged by a tenth of a percent of the public deficit but don't consider it a crisis that clinical trials designed for male bodies kill 130,000 women a year worldwide and cost 52 billion euros? Where is the competitiveness?

Here the EU could make a huge difference by adding equity conditions to the economic ones, making it both more competitive and fairer. But it will only do so if civil society, the scientific community, and citizens' movements decide that tolerating this gap is as unjust as it is ineffective, and demonstrate this through organized pressure. There is no lack of data or capacity; what is lacking is the will.

This logic applies equally to women's health and other decisions that seemed impossible until the public's voice was heard. The OECD has shown that the impact of mobile phones on attention and learning has been more negative than that of the pandemic, but institutions and public authorities, both European and national, only mobilized when families, teachers, and healthcare professionals raised their voices and demanded concrete changes.

This is today's reality: with weary institutions, political polarization, and fragile majorities, no one moves unless they feel pressured. We saw it with Gaza: the European Union reacted too little and too late, and yet the few steps that have been taken are not explained by moral epiphanies from the institutions, but by sustained pressure from civil society—in the streets, in the media, and at the ballot box. We are the ones who can make indifference unbearable.

Rebecca Solnit summed it up perfectly: hope isn't about believing everything will be alright, but about accepting that the future is unwritten and that what we do matters. If we want the European Union to live up to its promises, we must accept that, today, it is through citizen mobilization that the decision of whether the European project withers or is reborn will be made.

How can we make the welfare state sustainable in Europe? How can we alleviate the discontent? The problems are too complex to be solved with a slogan. But if I had to choose a single measure with a real chance of changing things for the better, it would be to guarantee a greater presence of women in positions of responsibility. Not because they are inherently better, but because evidence shows that when they are truly present, it is easier for health, education, care, and material dignity to move to the forefront of the agenda.

There's an old anecdote, probably apocryphal, in which a journalist asks Gandhi what he thinks of European civilization, and he replies: "I think it would be a good idea." For the EU, the question today is similar: what's the point of talking about European values ​​if a growing segment of the population lives with the impression that, no matter what happens, the system will leave them behind? The problem isn't just that we've tolerated too much inequality, but that we've done so without revising the conceptual framework that has made it possible.