Towards a new era of representative democracy: The ActEU legacy in one book

By Daniela Braun, Alex Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, and Kristina Weissenbach

The Horizon Europe project Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarisation (ActEU) examined questions of political trust and democratic legitimacy in Europe. This article is part of a series in which ActEU researchers present their findings.

Out now!

Over the past years, Der (europäische) Föderalist has accompanied the ActEU project as a recurring point of reference for debates on the state of democracy in Europe. ActEU researchers – a consortium of twelve European partner institutions – investigated political trust and legitimacy in Europe, focusing on citizen attitudes, participation, and the representation of policy preferences. Their overall aim was to map persistent problems of declining trust in the EU’s multi-level governance system and develop a toolbox of remedial actions for policymakers, civil society, and the educational sector to enhance political trust.

Across multiple contributions in this blog, ActEU researchers have invited us to look beyond headline indicators of democratic decline and to ask more fine‑grained questions about trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe’s multi‑level political system. This has included analysis of trust and economic deprivation, trust and local government, polarisation and climate protests, representation, and the 2024 European Parliament elections, as well as details of the project’s youth outreach activities.

With the publication of the open‑access edited volume Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarization: Towards a New Era of Representative Democracy, this intellectual journey now reaches its culmination. The book brings together the central theoretical reflections and empirical findings of the Horizon Europe-funded ActEU project and translates them into a coherent analytical framework.

Trust is not a by-product, but an indispensable resource for democracy

The timing of this publication could hardly be more appropriate. European democracies are operating under conditions of permanent stress: successive crises, intensified geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and deepening social and political polarisation. In such contexts, political trust is often treated as a diffuse sentiment that simply “falls” during crises. The volume starts from a different premise: Trust and legitimacy are not residual by‑products of democratic politics, but indispensable resources without which representative democracy cannot function in the first place.

Political trust, we argue, is a crucial yet underestimated element in Europe’s representative democracies. A trusting relationship between citizens and the institutions of the state ensures the functioning of democratic systems, reduces transaction costs and facilitates the justification of political decisions. Without the commitment of a critical mass, democratic governments cannot gain legitimacy among the populace.

While a stable relationship of trust between citizens and the state through political parties is a prerequisite for representative democracies in normal times, it is even more important in times of significant democratic change and turmoil, i.e., when democracies are in flux. Periods of crisis reveal not only whether citizens trust institutions, but also whether they feel represented, heard and able to participate meaningfully in political life.

The ActEU triangle: attitudes, behaviour, representation

At the conceptual core of the book lies the ActEU triangle, which provides a novel starting point for analysing trust and legitimacy in Europe. Instead of relying on single survey items asking citizens how much they trust “politics” or “parliament”, the triangle connects three analytically distinct yet empirically intertwined dimensions: political attitudes, political behaviour and political representation.

The ActEU triangle. (Click to enlarge.)

By linking what citizens think, how they act and how their preferences are represented in political outcomes, the framework allows for a more precise diagnosis of democratic strengths and weaknesses in Europe’s multi‑level systems.

Declining trust is often rooted in concrete experiences of exclusion

Building on this framework, the empirical chapters of the volume draw on original ActEU survey data and complementary qualitative evidence to map trust and legitimacy across different European contexts. Within seven multi-level case studies – Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain – the book covers a wide range of political systems and democratic traditions and explicitly takes into account the interaction between regional, national and European levels of governance. Across cases, a central finding stands out: Trust deficits are rarely uniform. They differ across institutions, policy areas and political levels, and they are often closely linked to perceived gaps in political representation.

Polarising policy fields such as migration, climate change or gender equality emerge as particularly revealing stress tests for representative democracy. In these areas, citizens’ attitudes, participatory behaviour and experiences of representation often diverge in ways that conventional trust indicators fail to capture. The ActEU approach shows that declining trust is frequently rooted not in general scepticism towards democracy, but in concrete experiences of misrepresentation or exclusion. This insight can be studied in much more detail in future research drawing on our innovative data sources, such as the ActEU Citizens’ Emotions & Trust Focus Group Dataset as well as the ActEU Digital Political Discourse Dataset.

Democratic renewal begins with careful analysis

Importantly, Activating European Citizens’ Trust does not stop at diagnosis. Throughout the volume, the authors emphasise that trust is not a fixed end‑state but a dynamic relationship that can be strengthened or weakened by institutional design, political practices and modes of representation. By systematically linking attitudes, participation and representation, the ActEU framework opens up space for targeted democratic reforms – from improving representational responsiveness to strengthening participatory channels suited to Europe’s complex multi‑level reality.

As the final contribution to the ActEU series on Der (europäische) Föderalist, this book thus provides a fitting conclusion. It encapsulates the project’s core ambition: not merely to document declining political trust, but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how representative democracy in Europe can adapt, recover and endure under conditions of crisis and polarisation. At a moment when democratic pessimism often dominates public debate, the volume is a timely reminder that democratic renewal begins with careful analysis – and with taking citizens’ trust seriously.

Daniela Braun is Professor of Political Science with a specialisation in European Integration and International Relations at Saarland University.

Alex Hartland is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of European Social Research at Saarland University.

Michael Kaeding is Professor of European Integration and European Policy at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Director of Studies of the European Political and Governance Studies Department at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Zoe Lefkofridi is Professor of Politics & Gender, Diversity & Equality at the Department of Political Science of the University of Salzburg.

Kristina Weissenbach is substitute professor for Ethics in Political Management and Society at the University of Duisburg-Essen and research coordinator of the NRW School of Governance.

Daniela Braun, Alexander Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, Kristina Weissenbach (eds.): Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarization: Towards a New Era of Representative Democracy, Cham: Springer Nature 2026 (open access).

Economic deprivation reduces political trust [DE/EN] ● Henrik Serup Christensen and Janette Huttunen Multi-level democracy and political trust in Europe: The role of the subnational level [DE/EN] ● Felix-Christopher von Nostitz Out of step? The EU’s difficult election dance [DE/EN] ● Alex Hartland, Daniela Braun, Giuseppe Carteny, Rosa M. Navarrete, and Ann-Kathrin Reinl What’s trust got to do with it? Political trust, polarized opinions and climate protest in Europe [DE/EN] ● Louisa Parks From seats to sentiments: What Austria teaches us about trust and representation in a multi-level Europe [DE/EN] ● Ermela Gianna, Matilde Ceron, and Zoe Lefkofridi ActEU Youth Democracy Labs: A young perspective on politics and political education in the EU [DE/EN] ● Alex Hoppe Towards a new era of representative democracy: The ActEU legacy in one book [EN] ● Daniela Braun, Alex Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, and Kristina Weissenbach

Pictures: Book cover: Springer Nature; authors’ portraits: private [all rights reserved].

EU Analytics – March 2026 review: EU policy making under the shadow of war

By Nicolai von Ondarza

On the EU-US trade “deal”, EPP and S&D showed their ability to compromise, whereas the far-right was divided.

March 2026 was another month of two-faced European politics. In high politics, the EU agenda was dominated by the US/Israel war against Iran and the fallout on energy prices, security, the NATO alliance, Ukraine and much more. On the other side, a lot had already been planned for the regular institutions in March: A European Council focused on competitiveness, two plenaries of the European Parliament with crucial votes on migration, trade policy and more, as well as new trade and security partnerships, for instance with Australia, Iceland or Ghana.

Both faces were also visible in the votes in the EP, which had most votes dominated by the ‘von der Leyen’ majority, but a crucial far-right enabled policy change on migration. In the Council, we had very few public votes, but the one on the EU’s climate goals revealed an area where the Visegrád Four, from Poland to Hungary, were united against the rest of the EU.

Time to dive in:

Highlight of the month: Implementation of the EU-US trade “deal”

Amongst several interesting votes this month I choose the EP votes adopting two aspects of the EU-US Turnberry trade “deal”, specifically implementing the lowering of tariffs on specific US goods. The votes were interesting to me for three reasons:

For one, they showed the power the EP has on trade policy, as it had postponed the vote several times in face of Trump’s threats over Greenland and the quickly changing US trade policy. The version that was finally adopted includes safeguards, so that the EU can suspend the agreement if Trump returns to threatening the EU or its member states, for instance by reimposing new tariffs. In practical terms, I’d argue that currently the EU Parliament is stronger on trade than the US Congress.

Secondly, it was also a vote that tested the ability of the EPP and the S&D, in particular, to find a compromise on trade policy. The S&D was much more reluctant to adopt the implementation, but grudgingly accepted it with the suspension clause (full voting data at HowTheyVote.EU). Equally interesting, Trump’s supposed “Patriotic allies” in Europe are becoming deeply uncomfortable with being too strongly associated with him. In consequence, here it was the far-right that was split: The ECR mostly voted for the implementation, while the majority of the “Patriots for Europe” voted against or abstained, as did the AfD-led ESN (which still courts the MAGA republicans). From the Patriots, this included all of Hungary’s Fidesz abstaining, despite Orbán seeking Trump’s and Vance’s endorsement ahead of the crucial upcoming elections.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

In turn, this thirdly also creates an interesting map if you look at voting of MEPs by member state. The Turnberry deal got the majority of support across most of Europe, with particularly high levels of favourable votes in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, while it got 0 per cent of support from Hungary, almost none from France and only about a third each from Austria and Slovakia.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Final votes in the European Parliament

In March 2026, the EP had two plenary sessions, one from 9-12 March in Strasbourg and one from 25-26 March in Brussels. Both plenary sessions together had 44 votes recorded at HowTheyVote.EU. Looking at the data from these votes, a contradictory picture emerges.

On first sight, these were two plenaries where the usual “von der Leyen” platform of EPP, S&D and Renew won the day. If you look at which party groups were most often in the majority and thus won most votes, these were the EPP (97.7%), the S&D and Renew (95.5% each). In contrast, the ESN stood at 25% of the votes, and even the ECR (70.5%) was below the Greens (84.1%).

On top of that, the three pro-European groups from the centre voted together 93.2% of the time, showing that, in principle, the centre can stand together. These included high-profile votes such as on the application of the EU-US trade deal, over which the EPP and the S&D had discussed controversially before. The three groups also had the highest overlap in terms of co-voting, with the S&D and Renew even voting together 100% of the time.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Only one of the plenary votes was won by the “Venezuela majority” of EPP with the far-right groups. That vote, however, carried a special weight. It was the vote on the return hubs, and thus a continuation of the EPP voting with the far-right on EU migration policy. On this vote specifically, the German press agency DPA had previously reported evidence that the EPP did not only vote with the far-right from committee level to fending off all amendments at the plenary, but also coordinated with all three far-right groups via WhatsApp and physical meetings beforehand. This reportedly also included taking on some of their proposed changes.

What’s more, after the vote on return hubs was adopted in the plenary, the far-right stood up for standing ovations, later celebrating that “the era of deportations has begun”. So, in quantitative terms, the far-right was relevant for the majority in only one vote, but this was a vote that really changes EU policy.

Public votes in the Council of the EU

For monitoring the Council votes, the analysis builds upon the public votes published, which are always fewer. For March 2026, eleven public votes have been recorded. Of these, four were adopted by unanimity and five with only abstentions, signalling a usual degree of consensus. Still, a few interesting bits:

• The most noteworthy vote was certainly the one on the EU climate target for 2040. Contrary to the dismantling/simplification of much of the Green Deal regulation, here the EU Parliament and majority of the Council stuck to ambitious goals. In the Council, the full “Visegrád Four” – Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – voted together against this, while Belgium abstained. Despite the differences between Poland and the rest of the V4 on other issues, on anti-climate legislation they find a common ground.
• Estonia abstained on three interlinked votes, all concerning reforms of the Crisis Management and Deposit Scheme as part of the resolution mechanism for the EU’s (still not completed) banking union.
• Hungary voted no twice and abstained twice, so was in the minority at roughly a third of the votes. The other No vote was on the implementation of bilateral safeguard clauses on the Mercosur Trade Agreement. This is in contrast to the other Mercosur-sceptics, who either abstained (Austria, Belgium) or voted in favour (e.g. France, Poland) of the safeguard.

Public vote on an amending regulation concerning the setting of a Union intermediate climate target for 2040. Source: Council of the EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Nicolai von Ondarza is Head of the Research Division EU/Europe of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik).

EU Analytics is a monthly column by Nicolai von Ondarza. It focuses on data-driven analysis of EU institutional affairs, looking at voting in the European Parliament and the public votes of the Council of the EU. The articles are cross-posted here from Nicolai’s own newsletter on Substack, where he occasionally also does other institutional analysis.

Pictures: all graphs: Nicolai von Ondarza; portrait Nicolai von Ondarza: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik [all rights reserved].