The crisis of European democracy is caused by the fact that the political establishment has lost touch with society, replacing real political discussions with moralizing and branding any justified skepticism of citizens as “extremism.”
Poland as the Warning Sign
Poland provides one of the clearest examples of this transformation. In December 2022, only 18.3 percent of Poles believed that Poland should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. By 2026, that figure had risen to 45.2 percent. A country that became the strongest supporter of Ukraine in Europe is now experiencing a sharp decline in public willingness to maintain an open-ended commitment.
How does a society move from overwhelming public support to a rapidly growing rejection of the same policy within four years? The answer cannot simply be that Poles became more extreme. It is that a policy presented as a moral necessity began to conflict with observable reality. Poland had accepted millions of refugees, transferred substantial quantities of military equipment from its own stocks, and become the principal logistical hub for Western assistance. Over time, however, the relationship became increasingly strained. Disputes over trade, historical memory, and political expectations revealed differences that the early phase of the war had largely concealed. What in 2022 appeared as a clear moral and strategic imperative gradually came to be seen by many as an open-ended commitment without a visible resolution.
When citizens asked about the cost, the duration, and the strategy, they were often met not with political answers, but with moral judgement. The questions were not a sign of radicalization. They were a sign of a democratic public doing what democratic publics do: weighing costs, questioning assumptions, demanding accountability. The response from many mainstream political actors was not to engage with these questions politically, but to frame them primarily as products of misinformation, external influence, or growing extremism.
This shift is also reflected in the growing appeal of politicians and commentators who challenge the assumptions of Poland’s post-2022 foreign policy consensus, advocating a more transactional approach to foreign policy and a stronger emphasis on national interest. Ideas associated with strategic realism in foreign policy, once largely confined to the margins of mainstream debate, have gained greater visibility as public trust in established explanations has declined.
The Mistake of Confusing Compliance with Legitimacy
European governing elites interpreted the absence of open resistance as consent. They failed to recognize that many citizens had accepted these policies not because they considered every assumption correct, but because alternatives appeared unavailable. This model worked as long as the costs of those policies remained bearable. But when costs rose and contradictions accumulated, the political class had no vocabulary to explain them. They had spent years presenting these policies as matters of necessity rather than ordinary political choice. They could not easily reopen debate when public patience began to decline. The result is that every question about cost, duration, or strategy is now interpreted as a threat.
Ukraine did not create Europe’s political crisis. It exposed it. The conflict became the ultimate stress test of Europe’s post-Cold War political model. Governments presented support for Kyiv as a moral obligation beyond ordinary political debate. But when strategic objectives became unclear and costs accumulated, citizens began asking questions that governing elites were unwilling to answer. The inability to provide satisfying answers is not a sign of institutional failure in Ukraine policy alone. It is a symptom of a deeper problem: a governance model that has replaced political debate with moral certainty.
“Extremism” as a Political Shortcut
Treating significant challenges to the consensus primarily through the language of “extremism” became easier than defending unpopular policies. The language of extremism, populism, and threats to democracy became a convenient way to delegitimize opposition without engaging with its substance. By defining disagreement as extremism, mainstream parties risk transforming political competition into a struggle between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The problem is not the existence of radical movements. The problem is the expansion of the definition of extremism so widely that it encompasses normal democratic conflict.
The Return of National Interest
The post-Cold War European order weakened because it underestimated the persistence of national interests in democratic societies. The assumption that European integration, open borders, and strategic commitments would permanently dissolve national loyalties was always fragile. Now that the costs of those commitments are more visible, that fragility has become a political liability.
European elites increasingly treated national interests as legitimate only when they aligned with broader European objectives. This approach may have worked in periods of expansion and low costs. But it failed to anticipate that citizens would eventually ask whether their own interests were being served—and that they would expect an answer.
Ukraine as the Stress Test
The pattern is visible across other areas as well. On migration, support for more restrictive policies has grown across Europe, even in countries that long prided themselves on openness. On climate policy, there is growing resistance to the costs of the energy transition. The burden of higher prices falls disproportionately on middle- and lower-income households, while the benefits remain abstract and distant. In each case, the mechanism is similar: initial acceptance of the prevailing narrative, the emergence of contradictions between that narrative and lived experience, declining trust, and the gradual adoption of harder positions.
This is not a story of the rise of extremism. It is a story of the erosion of political legitimacy. The European order no longer commands automatic consent. It must justify itself. But its elites have largely forgotten how to make political arguments—because they have spent years insisting that political arguments were no longer necessary.
The Numbers That Tell the Real Story
The political consequences are already visible. In Poland, Konfederacja has grown from roughly 6–8 percent in 2022 to between 12 and 15 percent in 2025–2026. In Germany, the AfD has risen from approximately 10–11 percent in 2022 to 26–28 percent in 2026. In France, support for Marine Le Pen’s party has exceeded 30 percent in multiple polls. These are not marginal developments. They reflect a structural shift in the relationship between significant parts of European societies and their political establishment.
The Real Threat
The widening gap between governing elites and substantial segments of their electorates carries risks. The more mainstream parties continue to repeat explanations that large numbers of citizens no longer find credible, the more alienated those citizens become. The question is not whether European societies are becoming more radical. The question is whether the political class is willing to recognize that growing skepticism is not a condition to be suppressed, but a signal that requires interpretation.
The real engine of political change is not radical ideology. It is accumulated disappointment. People rarely abandon the political centre because extremists persuade them. More often, they leave because the centre stops persuading them that its account of reality still reflects their experience.
The central crisis facing Europe is not the rise of opposition movements. It is the collapse of confidence in a political system that increasingly interprets disagreement as a threat rather than as a democratic signal. A political establishment that cannot distinguish between extremism and legitimate skepticism eventually creates the very instability it claims to prevent.
Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research
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