Europe’s political class promised prosperity through bigger government, mass immigration, and endless regulation. The results haven’t lived up to the promise of socialism. They never do.
Rome is burning, and Europe’s political class is still arguing over how many regulations, subsidies, and government programs it will take to put out the fire.
For decades, Europe’s “progressive” establishment has promoted an increasingly expensive social contract: more government services, generous benefits, shorter working hours, greater regulation, and the promise that someone else will pay for it all. Meanwhile, businesses are expected to absorb the costs, entrepreneurs are buried in paperwork, and governments increasingly look to imported labor to compensate for aging populations and persistent labor shortages.
But importing workers is not the same as creating prosperity. Immigration can strengthen an economy when newcomers possess needed skills, find productive employment, and contribute more than they consume in public resources. When immigration outpaces job creation, housing construction, education, and integration, the costs do not disappear. They are transferred to taxpayers, communities, and already strained public services.
n 2024, Belgium recorded approximately 116 robberies per 100,000 residents, France approximately 83, and Poland just 12. Meanwhile, the reported foreign-born shares of their populations in January 2025 were roughly 20 percent, 14 percent, and 2.6 percent, respectively. These statistics certainly justify asking harder questions about immigration policy, integration, policing, and public safety.Now look at Poland, France, and Belgium.
Meanwhile, Europe’s political establishment has developed another troubling habit: using the machinery of government against politicians who challenge its policies. In France, Marine Le Pen was initially barred from seeking office following an embezzlement conviction, although an appeals court subsequently restored her eligibility.
In Romania, authorities annulled a presidential election after nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round, then barred him from the rerun, citing electoral irregularities and foreign interference. None of which was proven.
In Germany, domestic intelligence authorities classified the opposition AfD as extremist, only to have a court suspend that designation.
Italy prosecuted Matteo Salvini over his decision to prevent a migrant rescue vessel from disembarking, before the courts ultimately acquitted him.
These cases have different legal circumstances, but collectively raise serious questions about political pluralism and the treatment of dissent. Meanwhile, European governments face real problems involving criminal gangs, failed integration, and Islamist extremism. Consider Brussels, the administrative capital of the European Union, where drug-related shootings have become a major public-safety problem, and authorities have had to increase security around railway stations. The British government specifically warns travelers about robbery and theft around Brussels-Midi and Brussels-North. There is something profoundly wrong when European governments appear more comfortable policing political dissent than ensuring that ordinary citizens can safely walk through their own cities.
France’s problems run deeper than immigration. A political culture increasingly organized around grievances, entitlements, and demands for government intervention has made reform extraordinarily difficult. Every benefit becomes permanent, every proposed reduction becomes an injustice, and every attempt to restore economic competitiveness encounters another constituency demanding protection from change.
And then there is Europe’s climate agenda. Brussels has imposed an increasingly complicated system of emissions targets, carbon pricing, energy regulations, and industrial mandates, all supposedly compatible with economic growth and prosperity. Yet these policies can make energy, transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture more expensive, particularly when affordable alternatives are not readily available. Industries facing higher costs must either raise prices, reduce investment, relocate production, or close. None of those outcomes improves the standard of living of ordinary Europeans.
There is a particularly perverse contradiction here. When climate policies make necessities more expensive, governments respond with additional subsidies and assistance programs to help citizens afford what government policy has helped make more costly. The EU’s new Social Climate Fund is designed to distribute billions to households and businesses affected by the costs of its expanding carbon-pricing system. More government intervention creates demands for more government assistance, while the productive economy is expected to finance both.
Better yet, climate change provides governments with a marvelous opportunity to rebrand the consequences of their failed economic policies as environmental victories. Can’t afford a car? Wonderful! You’re saving the planet. Airfare and vacations becoming unaffordable? Think of your carbon footprint! Can’t afford new clothes? Congratulations, you’re a sustainability champion. Less meat, smaller homes, fewer possessions, and fewer opportunities to travel can all be repackaged as acts of environmental virtue. The possibilities are endless. Who needs prosperity when you can have the moral satisfaction of doing without? Apparently, the secret to saving the planet is making everyone poorer and convincing them to feel virtuous about it.
And when economic growth slows, consumption falls, and ordinary families can no longer afford the lifestyles their parents enjoyed, environmental advocates can point to reduced resource consumption as a benefit for the planet. But declining prosperity should not be confused with environmental progress. A smaller economy, fewer opportunities, and a lower standard of living are not achievements simply because they may reduce emissions.
A prosperous society cannot be built by promising everyone more while making it progressively harder to produce anything. Wealth must be created before it can be redistributed. Businesses need incentives to invest, entrepreneurs need room to take risks, and workers need opportunities that offer more than dependence on government.
Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged at Davos that Europe had become a world champion of overregulation. Yet Brussels continues to produce rules while European political movements increasingly demand the return of national sovereignty.
The question is no longer whether Europe has problems. Its own leaders acknowledge them. The question is whether its governments are willing to confront the economic and political choices that helped create them.
Rome did not become prosperous by redistributing wealth it had stopped creating. Neither will modern Europe.
As for the USA, there but for the grace of God, we go. Those who do not understand what “Democratic Socialism” leads to will end up recapitulating the downward social and economic spiral of today’s EU. Eventually, one runs out of other people’s money to tax and spend.
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