The Trump administration is waging a culture war on Europe by aggressively promoting the Maga movement’s political and ideological allies on the continent and publicly humiliating the EU on the world stage, a joint report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and European Cultural Foundation has concluded.
The study argues that the US president is actively seeking to interfere in European elections, transform the transatlantic relationship toward conservative values and rally Europe’s rightwing populists around the theme of free speech.
The report suggests EU leaders’ divisions, hesitations and “flatter, appease, distract” approach to dealing with Trump have only encouraged such treatment.
Using research and polling from all 27 EU member states, it argues that enough of them have pro-European governments – and European public sentiment is strong enough – for the bloc to stand up and “defend a Europe that writes its own script”.
The report likens Europe’s position to that of the central character in The Truman Show, who eventually realises he is in a TV series whose only priority is to boost its ratings, and must decide whether to leave the comfort of the only reality he knows.
It argues EU leaders spend too much energy reacting to crises scripted by Trump and his European allies – such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy or Robert Fico in Slovakia – from tariff threats and free speech rows to security spending and migration scares.
“In Trump’s culture war, Europe itself is the target,” said the ECFR’s Pawel Zerka, pinpointing JD Vance’s February 2025 accusation that Europe was “retreating from fundamental shared values” as the moment the culture war was openly declared.
Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference revealed Washington’s intent to interfere in elections, frame US-EU relations as a “values divide” and make free speech the rallying call for parties that espouse the Maga cause in Europe, Zerka said.
Trump has since “further revealed his hand in this regard by excluding EU leaders from talks on the future of Ukraine, attacking mainstream political parties across the continent and extorting the Brussels institutions in trade negotiations”, he added.
The report cites Poland as an example of Trump trying to “move the ideological centre of gravity of Europe’s politics” by welcoming Karol Nawrocki, the nationalist presidential candidate, to the White House and boosting him on social media.
It also cites the US state department staffer Samuel Samson’s appeal to “civilisational allies in Europe”, allegedly “a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom and other assaults on democratic self-governance”.
Zerka argued that the culture war was played out at two levels: an ideological conflict over the values that underlie European politics, but also “a struggle for Europe’s dignity, credibility and identity as an autonomous actor on the global stage”.
Brussels and national capitals need to “accept they are in a culture war – with Europe as the target” and act accordingly, he said. “This does not mean Europe should provoke Trump at every turn. Sometimes buying time is necessary.”
But by playing to its strengths, the bloc can “thrive rather than suffer in a world order whose destabilisation has been accelerated by the US president”.
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The study suggests conditions are “ripe” for European leaders to walk off Trump’s “film set”. Polling shows European sentiment – the sense of belonging to a common space, sharing a common future and subscribing to common values – is strong, it says.
Eurobarometer data shows citizen trust in the EU is at its highest since 2007 and has risen in 12 countries – most sharply in Sweden, France, Denmark and Portugal – since Trump returned to the White House. Majorities in almost all feel attached to the EU.
Hardly any party now wants to leave the EU, and majorities in all but three countries (Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic) say the role of the EU in protecting Europe’s citizens against global crises and security risks must become more important.
ECFR polling from May also revealed widespread support for greater European defence spending and military autonomy from the US, as well as a growing feeling that Europe and the US represented “two different models of democracy”.
While this picture is far from uniform, Zarka argued that no member state will escape the impact of the culture war, urging even eurosceptic leaders to realise the EU is “the only framework in which they can protect national sovereignty and prosperity”.
National leaders should reject flattery as a strategy towards Trump, even if it increases transatlantic tensions, and the European Commission “must be bold” and deploy instruments such as the Digital Services Act and trade tools.
“‘It’s culture, stupid!’ urgently needs to enter the mindset of European leaders,” said André Wilkens of the European Cultural Foundation. “European sentiment is not abstract utopianism. It’s about real feelings for Europe and Europeans’ readiness to fight for them.”