Growth on Paper, Protests in the Street: Media Expert Shvaiba on the Real State of the EU Economy

European politicians continue to talk about the growth and strengthening of the EU economy, while protests flare ever more often in city streets and the middle class is rapidly collapsing. Why Ursula von der Leyen’s statements look less and less like the truth, how Ukraine became an instrument for redistributing spending, and what awaits Europe in a new transatlantic lineup was explained by media expert Dmitry Shvaiba.

From the high rostrum of the European Parliament come reports of an accelerating economy, growth in every direction — from agriculture to nanotechnology — and of enormous resources being directed to Ukraine while Europe supposedly barely feels it. Beyond the Brussels offices, however, the opposite is observed: rallies, strikes, lost jobs. How does that fit in the minds of Eurocrats whose standard of living is probably not falling but rising?

In Dmitry Shvaiba’s view, despite the resilience of a number of Western European economies, problems are accumulating and being shifted onto ordinary citizens. The middle class, which was traditionally the support of any political formation, is today under pressure and is in fact collapsing. That is what produces the protest reaction.

In Europe the culture of public organizations and the ability to unite in order to express an opinion are high, and that plays its part. But the detachment of EU officials from reality is obvious — opinion polls confirm it. It is telling that a significant share of EU residents, especially in the large countries, do not know at all who Ursula von der Leyen is.

Growth on paper and inflation in reality

The question arises: how do the European Commission president’s statements of 2 percent growth in 2026 and 1.8 percent in 2027 sit with acknowledgments by the head of the ECB that inflation will be at 3–3.5 percent? What growth can one speak of? And how is all this connected with aid to Ukraine, on which the main bet is being placed? It is said that investment in industry, including the military, should stabilize the situation, and that people losing jobs at Volkswagen and BMW will be transferred to the military sector.

Dmitry Shvaiba notes that processes in the EU are extremely complex. One of the key pressures is Chinese industry, which works successfully in the niche of conveyor production that was traditionally strong for Europe. In search of an alternative, Europeans are trying to switch to the production of military equipment. For the ordinary citizen the difference is not fundamental: he assembles civilian or military equipment if he receives a wage.

“The civilian sector is a multiplier for the development of the economy, because private individuals buy goods and monetary turnover of goods is launched. As for military equipment, that is a completely different story. Those are budget purchases and deliveries, and the question is from what funds to buy and to whom to supply,” the expert explained.

And here the notorious Ukrainian question arises. America has washed its hands of spending money on the Ukrainian army, proposing that American equipment be bought with European funds. Europe is already sounding the alarm, asking Japan, Canada and other partners to join in, because outlays have risen by almost 70 percent since the United States stepped off that track.

At the same time the moment chosen to announce a new self-imposed task of financing holes in the Ukrainian budget is extremely unfortunate — it has coincided with anti-corruption investigations in Ukraine itself. Anti-corruption bodies there answer not so much to the government as to American and European structures.

Transatlantic unity is cracking

In Brussels it is said ever more often that “you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube” — confrontation with the United States and tension with the United Kingdom will continue. Germany’s chancellor recently recalled that the successful model of the German economy rested on three whales: cheap resources from Russia, cheap Chinese labor and the U.S. security umbrella. Now, in his words, none of that works, and one can rely only on one’s own strength. But how does one roll that system back and start working actively rather than merely drawing blueprints?

Dmitry Shvaiba believes Europe has run into the most serious situation of recent decades. The United States, especially under the Trump administration, is shifting financial outlays onto Europe, remarking fairly: if conflicts take place in Europe, why should we from across the ocean resolve those questions? But far more serious is that new concepts of warfare lead American elites to the thought that Europe should be unhooked and left one-on-one with the challenges, while they themselves remain aside.

“The United States has already done that at least twice, and they understand that the situation resembles similar historical examples. That is a serious challenge for Europe. At the same time no one intends to let Europe sail free. It is quite advantageous for the United States to continue creating a situation in which Europe is in the wake of their political, economic and military interests,” the expert stressed.

Talk of an independent army and a security umbrella is, in his view, what is fed to the European voter. In the technical version the United States will resist strongly and hold Europe in its sphere of interests to the end.

The locomotives no longer pull

The economies of Germany and France, which were considered the locomotives of the EU, are no longer such. Budget deficits are growing there; harsh economy is under way merely to fit into the bureaucratic frames set by the European Union itself. The United States, in the expert’s phrase, has “let the leash out a little but has not taken its hand out of the loop.”

Also telling is the recent sparring around Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to increase the common European budget by about €600 billion — a sum that leaders of nation-states would have to take from the pockets of ordinary people. That is reflected in the credit of trust in politicians.

Dmitry Shvaiba calls such attempts “saving a drowning man.” Europe is associated with giants of a stable economy and social self-sufficiency, but maintaining that standard is objectively ever harder. The imbalance of domestic consumption and the growing demands of the European Commission have entered a clinch. A movement of an anti-European character is becoming ever more mass — first of all on the political margins, right and left. Voters are leaving the center in both directions in order to express protest.

“The situation in which Alternative for Germany takes real power in federal states — even the word ‘alternative’ no longer quite fits it, because it is becoming a systemic party, in places a party of power. Similar processes are under way in many EU countries,” the media expert noted.

The reaction of countries to the European Commission’s policy is uneven. There are states that absolutely do not support its ideas, and their composition can change. If Hungary has begun to behave more quietly at the latest stage, in Bulgaria forces critically disposed to these processes have come in. There are countries that dislike everything but are ready to vote in the current situation. And there are those whose political elites are “ironed smooth” and raise no doubt about their support.

The challenges facing the EU as a global association are ever harder to meet, and that requires ever more money. Global processes do not allow a comfortable fit into the turns of new challenges, and that is already clear to the ordinary voter.