The Three Words That Sum Up Europe's Political Moment: Anger, Anxiety, Ambivalence

New pan-European polling across 12 countries shows a consistent public mood that political scientists are calling the 3-A moment. Here is what Europeans actually think right now.

The Eurobarometer Plenary Insights for March 2026, supplemented by national polling from 12 EU member states and the UK, reveals a public mood that political scientists are beginning to describe with a specific shorthand: the Three A's. Anger — at energy prices, at politicians who did not prevent the current crisis, at the wealthy who seem insulated from consequences that ordinary people cannot escape. Anxiety — about the Iran war, about Ukraine, about a geopolitical environment that feels more dangerous than any time in living memory for most Europeans under 70. And ambivalence — about the institutions, leaders, and political parties that are supposed to address the anger and reduce the anxiety but that are failing to inspire confidence that they can do so.

The anger is measurable in specific ways. Pan-European polling shows that net approval ratings for energy policy — the question 'do you approve or disapprove of how your government has handled energy policy' — have fallen sharply across 10 of the 12 countries surveyed. The sharpest falls are in Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain — all countries with specific energy vulnerability dimensions in the current crisis. In Germany, net approval for energy policy has fallen from +12 in January to -23 in March — a 35-point swing in three months.

The anxiety component is measured through the 'general direction of the country' question, which has moved toward 'wrong track' in every surveyed country since the Iran war began. The percentage saying their country is heading in the wrong direction averages 64 percent across the 12 countries surveyed — a figure not seen since the post-2008 financial crisis period.

The ambivalence is the most politically interesting of the three dimensions. Across the surveyed countries, trust in political parties and politicians is at or near historic lows. But trust in specific institutions — courts, health systems, universities, the EU itself in many countries — has declined much less dramatically. Europeans are angry at the political class but retain more faith in the institutional fabric than populist movements have historically found available when they have tried to weaponize institutional distrust.