New times are sweeping across the world.
Times that require Europe to come of age—to become mature, responsible and fully aware of its role.
Times that challenge democracies to become more effective, more modern and better equipped to ensure inclusion, social justice and genuine public participation in political choices and decision-making.
Times that call upon our consciences to resist complacency, apathetic conservatism and the empty ritualism of those who worship the ashes instead of preserving the fire.
We are living through three great revolutions whose impact is only beginning to unfold.
The first is the technological revolution: a profound historical transformation moving society away from the analogue systems that have long governed human activity towards interconnected digital systems, with the quantum age now on the horizon. With artificial intelligence, computers no longer simply follow fixed rules; they learn from data, understand language and solve complex problems. Machines are coming alive. Through Big Data and the Cloud, immense quantities of information are collected and analysed in real time, shaping economic and social decisions. Hyperconnectivity, enabled by social networks and mobile devices, links us everywhere, transforming how we work, consume, relate to one another and experience community. And it raises a fundamental question: where will the increasingly intimate integration of human intelligence and intelligent machines ultimately lead?
The second is the ecological and energy revolution. As the consequences of climate change become impossible to ignore, we are being called upon to move from a global economic system based on polluting fossil fuels towards a sustainable model founded on clean energy and respect for the environment. The energy transition requires the progressive abandonment of fossil fuels, the expansion of renewable energy and far greater efficiency. The ecological transition is changing how we produce and consume goods. It demands the protection of nature and must place social justice at its centre. But it also disrupts the status quo, generating political, industrial, economic, financial and labour conflicts.
The third is the geopolitical revolution. The global balance that emerged from Yalta has broken apart, and the logic of empires—real or aspiring—is returning. Russia, the United States and the People’s Republic of China are playing a new game, confronting the European Union with an unprecedented challenge. War has returned to the heart of Europe because of Vladimir Putin’s reckless decision to invade Ukraine. That invasion has become the starkest expression of the struggle—indeed, in this case, the confrontation—between democracies and autocracies over the construction, to borrow Kissinger’s phrase, of a new world order.
This is where Democrats Review comes in.
Faced with this profound global upheaval, democracies are being tested by the combined consequences of these transformations. Economic inequalities within our countries have fractured the social contract, leaving millions of people excluded from the benefits of prosperity. Electoral participation is declining, while many citizens increasingly struggle to believe that democratic institutions can solve their problems. This creates fertile ground for populism, polarisation and the search for a strongman. Combined with the crisis of journalism and the impact of technology, these forces destabilise public opinion and deepen imbalances of power—made still more dangerous by the concentration of artificial intelligence in the hands of a small number of tech titans.
Autocracies claim that the absence of political freedom can be offset by strong economic performance, as in China. They seek to disprove the idea that democracy is the only path to growth and prosperity. They use digital disinformation, cyberattacks and geopolitical pressure to intensify divisions within free and democratic societies, weakening their resilience and internal cohesion.
Across the world, democracies have once again become a political minority: 72 per cent of the global population now lives under authoritarian or illiberal governments. The era of the “end of history,” with its illusion that liberal democracy would spread across the world without further resistance, is over.
Weimar teaches us that democratic procedures are indispensable, but insufficient. Democracy must modernise and rise to the challenge of changing times. Democratic systems can be hollowed out from within, silently and gradually, when the historical, social and—above all—moral foundations on which they were built are allowed to disappear.
This is why Democrats Review was created: to provide the community of European Democrats with a forum for analysis, debate and action, contributing to the construction of the “Community of Global Democracies” that the European Democratic Party—most recently at its Congress in Bilbao—identified as an essential path towards securing a future for freedom, democracy, social justice and solidarity.
Democrats Review intends to be an open workshop: active, evolving and permanently in motion. One of the great strengths of democratic systems is their resilience, their flexibility and their ability to adapt and develop in response to change.
Retreating from the new realities of our time into a comfortable and complacent conservatism can lead only to defeat.
Embracing the challenge, seeking to govern change and returning to our values as an anchor amid today’s storms are essential if we are to build a future for everyone—beginning with younger generations.
Across Europe and the world, sovereignist and nationalist forces have chosen to build closed societies founded on fear and resentment, presenting them as an answer to the future.
We must build something different—something genuinely alternative. It cannot be founded on nostalgia for a supposed golden age of the “social-democratic century.” It must instead create a contemporary, effective and modern democratic model rooted in the idea of the “open society.” As Karl Popper taught us, an open society is one in which democratic principles and individual liberty offer a path towards the moral, spiritual and material advancement of the whole community.
In an age polarised between personalism on one side and transhumanism on the other, politics must make a decisive leap forward.
If we European Democrats do not do it, no one else will.
But we cannot surrender tomorrow’s dreams, ambitions and hopes—built upon the great struggles for freedom and democracy of the past—to pessimism and resignation.
That is why, in a spirit of cooperation between the Institute of European Democrats and the European Democratic Party, we are beginning this journey.
Together with you.
