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The European Union faces a strategic reality regarding the safety of its citizens. A recent study commissioned by the ECR Party reveals what citizens of member states think about rising defence spending, state sovereignty, and the EU’s common debt. The times we live in, in a Europe marked by geopolitical insecurity, where conflict on its eastern border, coupled with hybrid pressures and an increasingly fragmented international order, require a serious debate on the necessary defence spending. This debate seems to have definitively moved beyond the technical realm and entered the heart of the democratic politics of European leaders.
The survey conducted by PollingEurope in November, at the request of ECRP Party, provides one of the clearest and most recent snapshots of how European Union citizens perceive the rising costs of the arms industry, strategic priorities, and the limits of European integration in the field of security. Beyond the figures provided, the study tells a coherent story: EU citizens support and agree with strengthening defence, but not in any form. Europeans want security, but not at the cost of national sovereignty. They accept cooperation, but view fiscal integration and the mutualization of the Union’s common debt with suspicion. In this overall context, the position of the ECRP (European Conservatives and Reformists Party) electorate appears not as an ideological exception, but as a consistent and structured expression of widely shared intuitions in European society.
An apparent consensus – 75% of Europeans want investment in defence
The first and most important result of last month’s survey reveals a majority consensus among citizens in favour of increased investment in defence. Thus, across the 27 member states, 75% of respondents believe that Europe should invest in defence, either through a common European system or by strengthening national armies and cooperating with NATO. This pretty significant percentage is remarkable not only for its size but also for its geographic distribution. Even survey respondents living in Western European countries, which are traditionally more reluctant to militarize, expressed support for investing in the arms industry, and that support seems to be holding strong. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Central and Eastern Europe, where the threat from the Russian Federation is perceived as being very direct, public support for military investment rises to over 80%, while in Poland, the European country with the longest border with Ukraine, where we have had a major conflict for almost three years, support for defence reaches an impressive 89%. This convergence points to a key fact, namely that the debate is no longer about “whether” the European Union should invest in defence, but about “how,” “how much,” and “in what political framework” it will make this investment.
We can argue that there are two visions of European security. In this situation, we are talking about European integration versus national sovereignty. From this point of view, the survey highlights an almost perfectly balanced division between the two security models preferred by European citizens. According to the study, at the European level, 37% of citizens support investment in a common European Union defence system, while 38% of those interviewed prefer to strengthen national armies in close cooperation with NATO. This polarization cannot be considered superficial because it actually reflects two distinct visions of the future of the European project to invest in defence. From the perspective of the first approach, security can be defined as a new driver of integration, a natural step towards a “geopolitical Union.” The second approach starts from the idea that security is a fundamental attribute of the nation-state, and that member states must play a complementary, not a substitutive, role. It is relevant that this second approach, the security of the nation state, is very much in line with the ECR position, which most clearly aligns with a significant part of public opinion. With 53%, ECR voters and supporters are the most consistent group in supporting the strengthening of national armies and member states’ cooperation with NATO, explicitly rejecting the idea of a fully integrated supranational defence. This position cannot be seen as isolationism, but must be acknowledged as strategic realism, given that NATO is perceived as a credible security guarantee, while nation states remain the legitimate actors in the use of force.
Europeans’ real priorities are pragmatic, not symbolic, defence
Perhaps the most relevant section of the PollingEurope study is the one dedicated to concrete defence priorities. In this section, abstract discourse on “strategic autonomy” is replaced by extremely pragmatic options. Thus, the first priority indicated by citizens who responded to the survey (36% of them) is to strengthen the monitoring of the European Union’s airspace and prevent drone attacks by the Russian Federation. This option reflects the harsh lessons of the war in Ukraine and the awareness of the vulnerability of civilian and military infrastructure to technologies that are relatively inexpensive (a few thousand dollars/the cost of a drone) but extremely effective in causing immense material damage. Second in the hierarchy of priorities is strengthening intelligence capabilities and combating propaganda and disinformation. This priority is agreed upon by 33% of survey respondents. The fact that this preference exceeds traditional investments in the arms industry shows a maturing of public opinion, namely that modern warfare is informational before it is kinetic.
As for Iron Dome-type missile defence systems, they rank third with 30% support among citizens, followed by strengthening the European Union’s external borders through military presence and physical barriers, with 28% of respondents supporting the idea. This is often an extremely politicised issue, but one that is now taking on a strategic dimension, as these results clearly show that EU citizens no longer separate external security from border control. However, it is also interesting to note that priorities such as compulsory military service at European level or the expansion of the European nuclear arsenal remain a minority view. Ordinary citizens want effective protection, not ideological or symbolic projects.
The ECR electorate: structural convergence, not circumstantial
An analysis broken down by European political groups confirms that the ECR electorate is among the most consistent on defence issues. ECR voters and supporters support defence investment by a high proportion of 83%, but they have a clear preference for solutions based on national sovereignty, NATO, and intergovernmental cooperation. When it comes to priorities for defence spending, ECR voters are above average compared to other citizens with different ideological views in their support for air defence, border protection, and deterrence capabilities. At the same time, ECR voters are consistently skeptical about the idea of fully common defence policies imposed at the European level. This position of ECR voters reflects not only a conservative ideology, but also a careful reading of public opinion. In many Member States, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, attachment to sovereignty is directly linked to recent historical experiences, and national security is perceived as inseparable from national control.
Common European debt, the red line of public opinion
From the perspective of military investment, we can say that there is a relatively broad consensus among the citizens who responded to the survey, but things change radically when the discussion turns to how it should be financed. The question of creating a common European debt dedicated exclusively to military spending deeply divides public opinion. Across the 27 member states, only 42% of respondents support this idea of joint debt among states, while 39% are against it, with the rest of the respondents undecided. The differences in opinion become even clearer when we analyse voters by political group. ECR voters are among the most skeptical, with 45% against joint EU debt and only 40% in favour. This reluctance cannot be considered merely a Eurosceptic reflex, but expresses legitimate fears about the mutualisation of fiscal risks, the loss of budgetary control and the transformation of defence into a pretext for accelerated fiscal integration. It is no longer news that the experience of the common funds used by the EU during the pandemic continues to fuel suspicion that joint debt, once created, tends to become permanent.
Integration versus democratic legitimacy. A more realistic Europe, not necessarily a more federal one
One of the key messages of the study, perhaps the most important one, is that European integration in the field of defence is not met with opposition to security, but with a problem of democratic legitimacy. The citizens of the EU countries accept cooperation, but at the same time want to retain political control over fundamental decisions regarding military spending, priorities, and commitments.
In this context, the position of ECR supporters appears to be a bridge between the need to adapt to the new military threats looming over the Union and respect for the national democratic framework. And here we are not talking about rejecting the European Union, but about rejecting a centralised model that does not fully reflect the historical, strategic, and political diversity of the member states. This is precisely why the PollingEurope survey of November 2025 offers a clear lesson to decision-makers in Brussels, which should be learned by those who want all states to be indebted under the single umbrella of the European Union. If we look at the interpretation of the survey impartially and logically, we can say that European citizens want security, but on their own terms, not imposed by a political decision. That is precisely why the respondents to the study are calling for concrete solutions such as air defence, intelligence, and border protection, while at the same time viewing with caution fiscal or military integration projects that seem to exceed the mandate of the democratic vote. In this context, the convergence between public opinion and the ECR’s positions on defence cannot be considered an anomaly, but is in fact a symptom of a Europe that is becoming increasingly lucid, increasingly attentive to spending, and more aware of the limits of integration. That is why we must affirm that the future of European defence cannot be decided solely in strategic documents, but rather in the ability of leaders to respect this fragile balance between cooperation and sovereignty, because Europe no longer has the luxury of strategic naivety and, at the same time, does not seem willing to give up democratic control in the name of abstract security. The PollingEurope survey conducted in November demonstrates this with a clarity that is rarely found in the current public debate.