Growing numbers of Europeans no longer see the US as an ally, with a significant minority viewing the superpower as an adversary, a new survey has revealed.
The findings are from a a wide-ranging report commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) across 13 EU member states along with Switzerland and the UK.
The survey concluded that “European trust in the US has crashed to new lows.”
The conclusions make bleak reading for the transatlantic relationship but also show that Europeans do believe strained relations could be a temporary blip tied to the Trump presidency and that relations may improve again once he leaves office.
“Fully half the European public now see the US as not an ally but a ‘necessary partner’,” the report states. “A quarter of respondents, and higher shares in Denmark, France, Spain and Switzerland, even see it as a rival or even an adversary”.
The EU countries polled were Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden.
“Europeans do not expect America under Donald Trump to protect them, and they recognise the need for more autonomous security,” the report explains, reflecting the mood in Europe that it cannot rely on the US for military protection any longer.
Following Trump’s erratic foreign policy, including threats to take Greenland by force and withdraw US military support in countries such as Germany, “majorities in every European country polled think ‘that the US would not support them if they came under attack—whereas they do trust their European neighbours
to do so,” the report explains.
However, while sceptical of the Trump White House, Europeans don’t feel that the damage is necessarily permanent: “They do think the US will come back after Trump and want to leave the door open to that possibility,” the ECFR notes.
Across all countries, just 11 percent of respondents now consider the US to be an ally, down by 5 percent in the last six months and a staggering 22 percent fall since November 2024 in the last days of the Biden administration.
Incredibly, a quarter of respondents (25 percent) now see the US “as either a rival or an adversary.”
This decline has been largely shared across Europe and consistent: “In most countries, the decline has been steady, except for Poland and Hungary where it is a newer phenomenon,” the report notes.
This also has a party political element too, the polling found.
“Across the countries polled, supporters of only two major, right-populist political parties—Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland and Reform UK— continue to view America primarily as an ally,” the findings state, demonstrating that “Trump’s US is now losing the trust of all but its most faithful European comrades.”
On Trump, the polling also provides some interesting insight into European perspectives on the President and his personal role in international relations on a country-by-country basis.
For many respondents, Trump himself has damaged the transatlantic relationship.
Asked which view best reflects their own, majorities in several countries said “Donald Trump has damaged the relationship between Europe and the USA, but it will probably get better once he’s left office”.
In Germany some 53 percent agreed; Switzerland 53 percent; Italy 55 percent; Austria 55 percent; and the UK 56 percent.
In France some 63 percent agreed; in Spain 60 percent; and Sweden 60 percent.
Significant minorities, however, see the damage as irreversible.
Respondents were asked if they agreed with the statement: “Donald Trump has damaged the relationship between Europe and the USA and the damage will last even once Trump has left office”.
Some 31 percent of Danes polled said as much; followed by 28 percent of Swedes; 27 percent of Italians; 26 percent of UK respondents; 22 percent of Spaniards and 17 percent of French respondents.
Looking closer to home, ECFR also found that “although they continue to back Ukraine, Europeans do not believe the EU’s eastward enlargement would be a good idea in the current context; they are also reluctant to send their own troops to keep the peace in a post-war Ukraine.”
