5:59 v originále: Gerald Knaus on Europe facing multiple threats

Europe appears to be in a bind. On one hand, it is threatened by an aggressive Russian regime. On the other, there are the United States under Donald Trump, openly describing Europe as a continent in decline. How should leaders of the European Union respond to the unprecedented situation?

„I love Europe, and I want to see Europe do good, but it's not heading in the right direction,“ was just one of many affronts Donald Trump has thrown at European leaders during his recent speech in Davos. Mentions of a „deep civilizational decline“ Europe is supposed to suffer from – in no small part due to the mass migration it has allegedly left unchecked – have become commonplace in the White House communication ever since Trump had been reelected.

Gerald Knaus, founder and chairman of European Stability Initiative, Berlin and Vienna-based think tank, wholeheartedly disagrees with these insinuations.

„This idea that somehow what we've achieved in the last 30 years in Central Europe, in the last 70 years in Western Europe is a story of decline is pure propaganda by those that have autocratic visions and that want to do away with democracy,“ he said in the 5:59 news podcast of Seznam Zprávy.

Listen to the full interview with Gerald Knaus in the English version:

„It's – compared to the murder rate in the United States or in Russia, compared to the demographic problems in China or other Asian countries, and compared to the daily life in most of the world – bizarre to think of Europe at the moment in 2026 as a continent in decline,“ insists Knaus, a renowned political scientist and migration expert hailing from Austria who now makes Berlin his home.

Knaus is a passionate defender of the „European miracle“ who wrote several critically acclaimed books on the matter including his latest, Welches Europa brauchen wir? (What Europe do we need?), published last year.

„[Both the EU and NATO], the pillars of democratic peace, are now under threat like never before, because there is an aggressive Russian state that is waging the bloodiest war since the Second World War in Europe,“ Knaus says in the interview for 5:59. „And for the first time since the 1940s, we have a government in the United States that is no longer in favor of strengthening its European allies and European institutions, but on the contrary, is trying to undermine them,“ he adds.

How should leaders of the European Union respond to this unprecedented situation? And how should they address the rise of parties that portray European institutions as instruments of oppression against national sovereignty? For more insights and analysis listen to the full 5:59 podcast in the player above.