Western Europeans won the lottery of life. But this is changing, culturally and economically

The Grand Place in Brussels, where the sense of being on the border of two great civilisations is impossible to escape

À La Mort Subite (Sudden Death) is one of the most celebrated cafes in Brussels and was a regular haunt of Jacques Brel, Belgium’s most influential cultural export. Singing theatrically in French, chain smoking and vulnerable, Brel sold millions of records, influencing many English-language singers, including David Bowie, Scott Walker and Neil Hannon. A product of this bilingual country, Brel was the quintessential Bruxellois, a son of this fascinating city which lies on the cultural fault-line that divides the Germanic and Latin worlds. Sitting in À La Mort Subite , with its heavy northern Teutonic beer list and subtle French classic dishes, that sense of being on the border of two great civilisations is impossible to escape.

Europe, or at least western Europe, is the fusion of the Germanic and the Latin worlds. The result of the fifth-century Visigoth invasion of western Europe, it is the place where the German tribes and the Roman Empire collided. This Germano-Latin mix, the basis of what we term western Christendom, has been one of the world’s most potent and consequential cultural hybrids. The German and the Latin worlds have defined Europe, fuelling the great European maritime expansion, while imposing on the rest of the world ideologies manufactured and refined in the Germano-Roman world. Missionary Christianity, along with capitalism, mercantilism and socialism, are all products of Germano-Roman DNA.

Along the way, ancient cultural divisions between the Visigoths and the Romans simmered beneath the surface. Language and cultural demarcations never entirely disappeared. Within Christendom, the cultural divide erupted with the Reformation. Sectarian boundaries were redrawn more or less along the frontiers of the old western Roman Empire. The Goths became Protestants, the Latins remained Roman. Over the subsequent centuries, western Europe evolved from observant Christianity to the Enlightenment and towards secularism. Both the Visigoths and the Latins embraced this path, albeit at a different pace.

In the 20th century, both the first and second World Wars (or what could be more accurately termed the Long European War from 1914-1945) played out roughly along similar Visigoth- Roman lines on the front between Germany and France. After 1945, the European Union emerged essentially as a truce between the Visigoths and the Romans, the Teutons and the Latins, the beer drinkers and the wine drinkers, the butter spreaders and the olive-oil merchants.

As with most truces, it is uneasy. Even the 2008 financial crisis played out along Reformation lines: the Catholics needed bailouts, while the Protestants gave lectures. And yet, even as the expansion to the east has changed some of the EU’s DNA, the enterprise has held quite well, particularly when defined by an enemy which for many years was the Soviet Union, and more recently Putin’s Russia. Since 1989, the EU has largely been defined by human rights, civil liberties and the “good life”. Prosperous and centrist, early 21st-century Europe was the best place for an average human to be born in the history of humanity. Western Europeans won the lottery of life.

But this is changing, culturally and economically.

Since the eighth century, Christendom has also been defined by its opposition to Islam. Once Byzantine north Africa was lost to the Saracens, the Mediterranean became Europe’s southern border, a maritime barrier. Whatever divided the German and the Roman tribes, the one thing they could both agree on is that they weren’t Muslim and the one thing Christendom was not, was Islam. Christian Europe evolved in its more secular or enlightened incarnation. Today’s post-Enlightenment Europe is a tolerant, human rights-defending Europe, imbued with sexual equality, individual rights and a democratic tradition. When I was a child, traditional Christian Europe and modern secular Europe were at odds with each other; now they find themselves on the same side, wanting to protect the European “way of life”.

Today the Mediterranean is less a maritime barrier and more a bridge, and this fact is clearly animating many western Europeans. In the more recent past, the division was geographical, demarcated by borders, but today, due to large-scale immigration, this ethnic-religious dispute is playing out in politics everywhere.

An additional aspect of the Germano-Latin experience that is changing rapidly is economic. For centuries, Europeans exported the world’s big ideas. Capitalism, socialism and democracy were seeded from Europe to the proto-European societies including America, Australia and New Zealand, where political set pieces were established along European lines. Even the postcolonial struggles were framed in European terms, the most obvious one being the Chinese Communist Party fusing its Confucian philosophy with the thoroughly European ideology of Marxism. All other major de-colonial movements, notably the Congress Party in India, were founded and run by people educated in Europe, schooled in the ideas and language of Europe.

Underpinning all these European exports was financial and economic prowess, immense wealth and relentless commercial innovation, all of which gave Europeans a sense of superiority. As long as the economy was pre-eminent, European self-esteem was preserved. Even if places such as the United States emerged as top dogs, it didn’t affect European confidence so much because the US was proto-European.

In the past 20 years all that has changed. In 2000, the EU’s economy was roughly six times bigger than China’s and slightly behind that of the US. Today, the US is about three times bigger than in 2000, while the EU is only 2.67 times bigger despite enlargement, and the Chinese economy is more than 16 times bigger. In the tech sector, Europe is way behind. For example, European AI start-ups raised $14 billion in 2025, compared to $146 billion in the US. European energy prices, the critical costs for industrialisation, are on average 30 per cent higher than in China and five times as high as in the United States. Today, technology makes up roughly 40 per cent of America’s S&P 500, compared to just 5 per cent in Europe. The US is pulling ahead and China has caught up.

This new economic reality, combined with the perceived cultural threat of immigration, is the main reason for the political angst we see everywhere. Not only must Europeans contend with domestic economic inertia but now face decline relative to other continents. Europeans still take longer holidays, work fewer hours and enjoy the finer aspects of life more thoroughly than others, but how long can this last?

As I listen to Jacques Brel in À La Mort Subite, wondering whether to try a Visigothic beer or a Latinish red wine, the irony of European contemplation is not lost on me. We Europeans, one of the most impressive cultural enterprises of the past few hundred years, are at a crossroads. For years we could look down on and contrast ourselves with the despotism of Russia or the economic backwardness of China, all seen from behind the security of the Mediterranean, and protected by the vast Atlantic, secure that the proto-Europeans in Washington had our backs. No longer.

Which way Europe jumps is anyone’s guess.