The European Moment: A Speech to Europe 2026 by Anne Applebaum

About the Speech

Every year, around Europe Day on 9 May, one of the leading thinkers takes the floor at a square in the heart of Vienna to deliver what has become one of Europe’s most anticipated intellectual events. Initiated by the ERSTE Foundation to mark Europe Day, the “Speech to Europe” series began in 2019 with the acclaimed historian Timothy Snyder. Since then, prominent thinkers have followed: Ukrainian human rights activist Oleksandra Matviichuk spoke on “No Peace without Freedom,” and philosophers Omri Boehm and Lea Ypi analysed the legacy of colonialism and the crisis of international solidarity.

The venue is not chosen by accident. Vienna’s Judenplatz serves as a reminder that Europe can only be understood in the mirror of its history. The square stands over the ruins of one of medieval Europe’s oldest synagogues, destroyed in 1421. At its centre sits Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial — a concrete cast of a library with its books turned inward, their spines invisible, their titles forever unreadable. It is a monument to annihilation, to knowledge silenced. Since 2019, people have gathered here to listen to scholars, writers, thinkers — speaking to Europe, about its past and its future. Behind them: the Holocaust Memorial of invisible books. A backdrop. A starting point. This was Europe’s past. What about its future?

It is against this backdrop — literally and historically — that each speaker must answer that question. Each year, the event invites the speaker to deliver a narrative which shines a different light on the Europe we live in, and would like to live in.

This year, on 13 May 2026, that speaker was Anne Applebaum.

Who Speaks

Historian and author Anne Applebaum explored whether now is truly “the European Moment” — and whether Europeans themselves even recognise it. Applebaum is one of the foremost chroniclers of totalitarianism and democratic backsliding. Her books — among them Gulag, Iron Curtain, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy, Inc. — have mapped the mechanisms by which free societies collapse from within. She did not come to Vienna to offer comfort. She came to issue a challenge.

What Applebaum Argues

1. Europe’s postwar order is an extraordinary achievement — now taken for granted

After the Second World War, Europeans did not simply put things back the way they were. Surrounded by rubble, they chose to build something entirely new — a framework of institutions designed to guarantee liberal democracy, the rule of law, and economic cooperation between former enemies. The Europe that emerged is, as Applebaum argues, unprecedented: safer, richer, and more peaceful than at any point in its history. Yet this very success became a vulnerability. As she put it directly: “Because these institutions worked so well, people began to imagine that they were not the result of hard work and difficult compromises but rather something natural, just some ‘bureaucracies’ that emerged by themselves.”

Why this matters: This is precisely the vulnerability that pro-Russian disinformation exploits. By portraying European institutions as bureaucratic inconveniences rather than deliberate human achievements built on painful historical lessons, Kremlin messaging finds fertile ground in societies that no longer remember what those institutions were designed to prevent. For countries in Europe’s East — living under constant Russian pressure — the stakes of this complacency are not abstract. They are existential.

2. Old authoritarian ideas are returning — recycled, but recognisable

Applebaum draws a direct, unsettling line between the political vocabulary of the 1930s and that of today’s European public discourse. Scorn for elections, ethnic nationalism, theocracy, the cult of the strong leader immune from criticism — none of these are new. They have been tried before, and history has recorded the result. She is precise about the genealogy: “When you hear European politicians talking about the ‘degeneracy’ of democracy, or the ‘weakness’ of liberalism, remember that these same words were also used in the 1930s, by groups describing themselves as both Left and Right.”

Why this matters: Citizens across EU-aspiring and candidate countries — from Georgia and Armenia to Moldova, Ukraine, and the Western Balkans — are daily targets of a propaganda ecosystem that uses exactly this recycled vocabulary — portraying liberal democracy as weakness, EU integration as submission, and national sovereignty as something only strongmen can protect. Applebaum’s point is a powerful counter: these ideas are not bold or new. They are old, discredited, and catastrophically dangerous. Anyone promoting them today is not offering a vision of the future. They are reaching into a past that Europe already paid an enormous price to escape.

3. Russia’s war on Ukraine is also a war on the European order

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not, Applebaum insists, simply a territorial dispute. It is an assault on the foundational principles of postwar Europe — that borders cannot be changed by force, that treaties mean something, that imperialist conquest belongs to the past. The hybrid dimension runs deeper still: “For two decades now, Russian propagandists have belittled the Union, mocked its institutions and, echoing some Europeans, portrayed it as decadent, divided, overregulated, or doomed.” Russian money backs European political parties. Russian operatives placed explosives on a Polish railway line. This is not soft influence — it is organised destabilisation.

Why this matters: The “declining Europe” narrative promoted by pro-Russian forces is not a spontaneous public sentiment. It is a coordinated strategic campaign, designed to make EU integration appear pointless and Russian dominance appear inevitable. Applebaum names this mechanism with historical precision. Her words are a direct and authoritative answer to the very campaign our audiences face every day.

4. The United States is no longer a reliable partner for European democracy

This is where Applebaum makes her most challenging — and most necessary — geopolitical argument. The shift in Washington is not a temporary disruption. It represents a fundamental realignment. “The United States under this administration is no longer interested in leading democratic coalitions, against Russia or anyone else. Democracy is no longer at the center of US foreign policy, or of America’s identity.” What makes this particularly significant is the convergence it produces: for different reasons, both Russia and the current US administration favour a weaker, more fragmented Europe — one less capable of acting independently in the world.

Why this matters: For countries like Georgia, Ukraine, and others that have long looked to the transatlantic alliance as the ultimate guarantor of democratic order, this shift is deeply disorienting. But Applebaum’s argument is not defeatist — it is clarifying. If Europe cannot rely on external guarantors, it must become its own guarantor. That makes European unity, and EU enlargement, not a luxury or a distant aspiration — but an urgent strategic necessity.

5. Europe must build, not merely defend

Applebaum closes not with a lament but with a challenge. Europe’s achievements — independent courts, respect for contracts, the rule of law, freedom of speech, accountability of governments to citizens — are not sentimental attachments. They are competitive advantages in a world of unreliable powers. But she reserves her sharpest words for those who invoke European civilisation while hollowing out its foundations: “You cannot celebrate European civilization while simultaneously attacking the legal and political order invented here, or while openly seeking to undermine the institutions that protect pluralism and dissent. Anyone who does so is defending the shell of that civilization, not its substance.”

Why this matters: This distinction — between the shell and the substance of civilisation — is one of the most powerful tools available in counter-disinformation work. Pro-Russian messaging frequently appropriates the language of European tradition, Christian values, and cultural heritage, while systematically dismantling the rule of law, judicial independence, and freedom of expression that make those traditions meaningful. Applebaum names this contradiction with precision. It is an argument worth repeating, widely and often.

What This Tells Us

Anne Applebaum’s speech at Vienna’s Judenplatz is more than a warning — it is a map of the current battlefield. She identifies three forces pressing against democratic Europe: a revanchist Russia waging hybrid and military war simultaneously, a disengaged America that has shifted from democratic partner to active complicator, and a recycled authoritarian ideology rising from within European societies themselves. But her conclusion is neither despair nor passivity.

We are living through a moment of great change, as significant and consequential as the end of communism in 1989. But we can make that shift work in our favour.

For the citizens of Europe’s democratic frontier — who stand at the very frontline of this struggle — Applebaum’s message carries particular weight. The Europe being attacked today is the same Europe worth joining tomorrow. Its institutions, its rule of law, its commitment to keeping its word: these are not bureaucratic abstractions. They are the difference between living in freedom and living under fear. And they were built — deliberately, painfully, at enormous cost — precisely so that the scenes once witnessed at the Judenplatz would never be repeated.

Europe thinks. Europe speaks. And it is worth listening to.

Read Anne Applebaum’s full speech here.