Europe in Free Fall

by Guy Millière  •  Gatestone Institute  •  August 23, 2026 at 5:00 am

By OttavianoUrsu – This file was derived from:Locator map of Europe with borders.svg:Flag of European Union.svg:, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia

• [T]he terrifying fact [is] that Europe’s erasure as a civilization is underway.

• Economically, Europe is in ghastly shape.
• For nearly five decades, the European Union’s economic growth and productivity rates have lagged behind those of the United States.
• European Union countries have established welfare states that have steadily expanded since 1980 and stifle economic growth.
• The European Union has also proliferated stifling regulations that place a heavy encumbrance on businesses. Restrictions on gas and electricity production, combined with a drive for a rapid and extremely costly transition to “renewable energy”, have resulted in natural gas prices in Europe that are now three to five times higher than in the US, and electricity prices that are 2 to 4 times higher than in the US. To survive, many European companies have relocated production outside Europe.
• International investment is turning away from Europe. Nine of the world’s top ten tech companies are American; the tenth is Taiwanese.
• Although heatwaves have been affecting Europe for more than two decades, the continent remains resistant to air conditioning, viewing it as an expensive luxury (AC consumes costly electricity)…. In 2003, a heatwave in Europe killed more than 20,000 people. Almost nothing was done to prevent a recurrence, so in 2026, another heatwave has already claimed 25,000 lives.
• Pessimism about the future — fueled by the questionable narrative berating “man-made global warming” and the hyped-up fear that the planet may become uninhabitable — is on the rise in Europe.
• Most new immigrants in Europe come from the Muslim world and appear to have no interest whatever in assimilating or becoming more westernized. Many are emphatically discouraged from doing either by the leaders of their communities, for instance, by “honor killings….” There appears to be a growing demand among immigrants, in fact, to make Europe more like the Third World countries they abandoned.
• The proportion of Muslims in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden has been increasing decade after decade – with consequences that anyone even slightly versed in history could have expected. Warnings have gone unheeded.
• Political parties defending Western civilization and values — while asserting their opposition to the Islamization of Europe and “civilizational erasure” — are gaining electoral momentum. Meanwhile, political leaders across major European nations and at the helm of the EU appear determined to prevent those parties from governing.
• The “offense” of those political parties disfavored by Europe’s “elites” consists of defending the values of the West, fighting the Islamization of Europe, and opposing the erasure of European civilization. These political parties are consequently subjected to exclusionary maneuvers and are relentlessly harassed by rival political leaders who not only seem to disagree but are also dragging the continent into a free fall and a possible cultural death.

On February 14, 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a laudatory speech about Europe and its legacy at the Munich Security Conference. He noted, however, that Europe is weakening. “We don’t want our allies to be weak,” he said.

His remarks initially were well received by the European political leaders and journalists in the room; not for long. Several journalists soon mentioned that, while Rubio appeared friendlier toward Europe than US Vice President J.D. Vance’s had been a year earlier, he was still “arrogant” in presuming that Europe needed advice on how to be stronger.

Some recalled that the Trump administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy had warned that Europe faces the “prospect of civilizational erasure” — a claim they described as an “insult” to Europe.

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