NLEN
From someone who left, but never stopped caring
Mérida, September 7, 2026
Dear Europe,
I left five years ago.
Before that, I spent most of my life with you. I grew up in the Netherlands, spent more than two decades building businesses and employing people in Amsterdam, traveled across the continent, and watched Europe change enormously during my lifetime.
Leaving did not make me stop caring. My family and friends are still there. I follow European politics, business, and society closely. And perhaps distance has made some changes easier to see.
I am writing this because I still care deeply about what Europe becomes, and because I hope it can once again be a place where people feel optimistic about their future.
The Europe I remember from the 1990s and early 2000s was not perfect. I have no interest in pretending it was. But it felt optimistic. Borders were opening. Technology was creating opportunities. Businesses were growing. Living standards were rising. There was a broad expectation that the next decade would probably be better than the last.
That feeling has changed.
Europe remains extraordinarily wealthy by global standards. You still have some of the world’s best cities, universities, infrastructure, companies, scientists, engineers, workers, farmers, and cultural institutions. There is no shortage of talent or potential.
Yet for a growing number of people, ordinary life seems to have become harder.
A home is increasingly difficult to afford. Energy costs more than it should. Healthcare systems struggle with capacity. Starting a company can mean navigating an extraordinary amount of administration. Employing somebody can be expensive while the person being employed still feels poorly paid. Young adults delay leaving home, forming families, or having children. Farmers spend increasing amounts of time navigating rules rather than farming.
And while all of this is happening, government often seems more capable of creating obligations than resolving basic problems.
Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness put numbers behind part of this feeling. Lower productivity accounts for roughly 70% of the gap in GDP per person between the EU and the United States, while real disposable income per person has grown almost twice as much in the United States since 2000. Headline GDP comparisons vary depending on whether market prices or purchasing-power parity are used, which is why I put more weight on productivity and household income. (European Commission - Draghi competitiveness report)
Housing tells another part of the story. Across the EU, nominal house prices rose by 64.9% between 2015 and late 2025, while rents rose by 21.8%. (Eurostat) Working-age populations are shrinking across significant parts of Europe, while energy-intensive industry faces a persistent cost disadvantage.
Europe is obviously not one place. Amsterdam is not Naples, Helsinki is not Bucharest, and Warsaw is not Paris. The causes and severity of these problems differ enormously.
But I increasingly think many of them share something underneath.
Over several decades, Europe has accumulated cost, complexity, commitments, and institutional power faster than it has increased prosperity, productive capacity, and the ability of ordinary people to shape their own lives.
That last part matters to me most.
Agency.
The ability to work, own something, build something, employ somebody, raise children, choose how to educate them, start a company, keep a meaningful share of what you earn, and have some influence over the institutions making decisions on your behalf.
I think Europe needs more of that again.
This is not a ten-point master plan. I do not imagine one person can solve a continent. It is simply what I would ask you to reconsider if the objective were to make Europe flourish again.
When I argue for smaller government, I do not mean fewer nurses, teachers, police officers, judges, or people maintaining infrastructure. In many places, Europe needs more people doing exactly those jobs.
What it needs less of are the layers surrounding them.
Over decades, governments have accumulated procedures, reporting requirements, departments, agencies, consultations, exemptions, appeals, and overlapping responsibilities. One authority requests information another authority already possesses. A permit moves from one desk to another without anyone clearly owning the decision. Rules created to solve an old problem remain while new rules are placed on top.
Meanwhile, things government genuinely needs to decide can take years.
A planning application should not disappear into an administrative maze. A grid connection should not require years of uncertainty. A court case should not remain unresolved indefinitely. An asylum claim should not take years. Infrastructure should not require a decade of procedure before construction can begin.
I would rather have fewer administrative layers and more people who are clearly responsible for making decisions.
Set deadlines. Give somebody ownership. Review regulations after several years and remove those that no longer achieve enough to justify their cost. Stop asking citizens and companies repeatedly for information government already has. Use technology to remove work instead of merely digitizing bureaucracy.
The European Commission has itself begun a substantial simplification program, including efforts to reduce administrative burdens on businesses and farmers. (European Commission) That should become normal practice rather than a cleanup exercise every decade.
Europe has become very good at creating safeguards against making the wrong decision. At some point, however, an inability to make any decision becomes a serious failure in its own right.
I do not want the European Union to disappear.
In some areas, I want a more effective Europe.
A genuine Single Market is valuable. European capital markets make sense. International trade, cross-border energy infrastructure, external-border cooperation, strategic technology, research, and defense can all benefit from continental scale.
These are areas where hundreds of millions of Europeans acting together have leverage that individual countries do not.
But European cooperation does not require every decision to move upward.
Many decisions about education, healthcare, family policy, housing, culture, policing, and daily life belong closer to the people affected by them.
The EU already has a word for this: subsidiarity. (European Parliament)
Use it.
Let municipalities decide what municipalities can handle. Let regions decide what regions can handle. Let countries decide what countries can handle. Move authority to Brussels when acting together clearly produces something individual countries cannot achieve themselves.
Complexity does not come from Brussels alone. National governments frequently add their own requirements to European rules, while regional authorities add still more. By the time a business or citizen encounters the result, nobody seems willing to accept responsibility for it.
I would rather have European institutions doing a limited number of important things exceptionally well than being involved, directly or indirectly, in almost everything.
But bringing decisions closer to people is not only about which level of government makes them. It is also about listening to the people who have to live with the consequences.
Too often, public consultation seems to begin after the most important choice has already been made. Citizens can submit comments, fill in forms, or attend a meeting, but they do not feel their input can still change the outcome.
That needs to change. Involve people earlier when major decisions will significantly affect their daily lives, neighborhoods, livelihoods, or future. Explain not only what was decided, but why, which alternatives were considered, and what happened to the objections that were raised. And when a clear majority remains opposed to something over a long period, do not automatically treat that as a communication problem that can be solved by explaining the policy better.
Democracy is more than voting every few years. People should feel that their voice matters between elections too. Government should move closer to the people, not further away.
There is something wrong with an economy in which employers think workers are expensive while workers think they are underpaid.
Both can be right.
Between what a company pays and what an employee can actually spend sit taxes, employer contributions, employee contributions, and, in some cases, the loss of benefits as income rises.
That gap deserves much more political attention.
Hiring a first employee should not feel like assuming an enormous legal risk. A company employing ten people should not need its own compliance department. Employment contracts should be understandable, termination procedures predictable, and taking on additional work should leave somebody meaningfully better off.
I know greater labor-market flexibility creates a trade-off. Making it easier to end an employment relationship reduces the security of that particular job.
But I would prefer to protect the person rather than try to make every individual job permanent.
That means unemployment protection, retraining, portable benefits, and an economy where finding another job is realistic. Security should come partly from knowing you can recover from losing a job, not only from making the current one almost impossible to lose.
And when somebody works more, they should keep a meaningful part of the additional income.
Europe has developed a strange relationship with producers.
Entrepreneurs, farmers, employers, tradespeople, and business owners are essential to everything else government wants to finance, yet political systems often encounter them first as entities to tax, regulate, monitor, or correct.
Agriculture illustrates the contradiction particularly well.
Europe spends enormous amounts subsidizing farming through the Common Agricultural Policy. At the same time, farmers face an extraordinary accumulation of rules, environmental requirements, reporting obligations, and uncertainty.
The Netherlands provides an especially visible example.
I am not convinced that the nitrogen problem, as it has been politically framed, remotely justifies the economic and social consequences attached to it. Others will strongly disagree with me. That is a debate worth having.
But proportionality matters.
When the Dutch cabinet presented its nitrogen package in June, Prime Minister Rob Jetten described a country where permits had been stuck, projects delayed, and farmers left uncertain about their future. The measures that followed produced renewed farmer protests, and even months later many farmers still did not know exactly what the policies would mean for their individual businesses. (Government of the Netherlands)
Whatever someone believes about the environmental models behind those policies, that outcome should worry us.
A system in which farmers cannot plan, houses cannot be built, infrastructure is delayed, and government itself struggles to issue permits is not functioning well.
The same principle applies to business.
Rules appropriate for Cargill should not automatically land in the same form on a family farm. Compliance systems designed around Siemens should not be imposed unchanged on a company employing fifteen people.
And once a company succeeds, it should be much easier to expand across Europe.
A successful Amsterdam company should not feel as though it is starting from scratch when it expands into France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. This is where I would like Europe to do more, not less: simpler cross-border company structures, easier employee ownership, deeper capital markets, and fewer barriers to scaling.
In March 2026, the European Commission proposed EU Inc., an optional European corporate regime intended to make digital incorporation and cross-border scaling easier. (European Commission)
People who build companies, employ others, produce food, and risk their own capital should feel Europe wants them there.
Housing may be the clearest example of a problem Europe keeps trying to manage instead of solve.
If ten households want five homes, giving all ten households additional purchasing power does not create another house.
You have to build one.
Then another.
And another.
That means releasing appropriate land, allowing greater density where infrastructure can support it, giving normal projects predictable approval timelines, and building transport, utilities, schools, and healthcare alongside new neighborhoods.
Faster approval does not mean abandoning standards. It means deciding.
The causes of housing shortages differ across Europe. Planning rules, interest rates, construction costs, land prices, household formation, investment demand, and population growth all matter.
Migration matters more in some places than others. In the Netherlands, strong migration-driven population growth has taken place alongside an already severe housing shortage. Pretending those two things have no relationship is just as unhelpful as pretending migration is the only cause.
Population and physical capacity have to be considered together.
Young Europeans should have a realistic path toward an independent home. When people with decent jobs cannot leave their parents’ house, cannot save for a home, and cannot imagine affording children, something fundamental has stopped working.
Europe’s immigration debate has become so emotionally loaded that even basic administrative competence can sound ideological.
It should not.
A functioning immigration and asylum system should be able to determine within a reasonable period whether somebody has the right to stay.
If someone qualifies for protection, let that person begin building a life. Let them work. Expect them to learn the language, participate, and contribute.
If somebody has gone through proper due process and has no right to remain, the decision should normally lead to departure.
In 2025, EU countries issued almost 492,000 orders to leave, while around 135,000 returns to third countries following an order were recorded. Those figures do not represent exactly the same people, but the difference still illustrates the size of the enforcement problem. (Eurostat)
A system that makes a decision but often cannot execute it eventually loses credibility with everyone.
Legal migration should also be connected to actual capacity. Employers needing workers is one consideration. Housing, schools, healthcare, wages, infrastructure, and integration capacity are others.
Europe will continue to need and benefit from immigrants. But migration should be controlled and purposeful.
I am personally more skeptical about mass immigration than the essay has probably sounded until now. I do not think continuously increasing population through migration is a sustainable substitute for fixing productivity, family formation, education, or labor-market problems.
And whether governments intended today’s migration levels or arrived at them through a succession of policies and incentives is not necessary to resolve here. The outcome still has to be judged honestly.
If housing, public services, integration, or public support cannot keep pace with population growth, continuing the same policy and calling objections immoral is not a solution.
This is probably where my view differs most clearly from the European political mainstream.
I care about the environment.
I want clean air, clean rivers, healthy soil, healthy forests, less plastic in the oceans, better waste systems, cleaner industry, and products that last longer and create less direct pollution.
Where I differ is on the place CO₂ has been given in European environmental policy.
Even someone who fully accepts the mainstream science faces a question that science alone does not answer: which interventions are sensible, effective, affordable, and worth their consequences? Those are questions of proportion and priority, not simply of physics. And proportionality is exactly where I think Europe has lost its way.
Europe already faces a structural energy disadvantage. It imports much of its energy, and the loss of cheap Russian pipeline gas has been enormously important to industrial electricity prices. Climate policy is not the main reason European energy costs more than American energy. The IMF has estimated that removing carbon pricing would leave more than 90% of the transatlantic electricity-price gap in place. (IMF)
That makes it even more important not to compound the disadvantage.
I also think Europe should be much more open to nuclear energy. I see it as a serious clean-energy option: reliable, large-scale power that can complement renewables and reduce dependence on imported fuels. Nuclear power has real trade-offs, including cost, construction time, and waste, but those are challenges to manage rather than reasons to rule it out on principle.
My concern is where future investment happens. Where will the next chemical plant, battery factory, data center, steel plant, or advanced manufacturing facility be built if Europe is structurally more expensive?
I would rather Europe compete to become the cleanest place in the world to produce things than gradually become a place where fewer things are produced.
Judge environmental policy by visible results: clean air, clean water, healthy soil, biodiversity, pollution, waste, energy reliability, affordability, and the environmental footprint of production.
For me, CO₂ is not a measure of pollution by which we should judge the quality of our environment. I would therefore focus European environmental policy on concrete pollution and demonstrable harm, not on continually reducing CO₂ as an end in itself.
Healthcare and education are two areas where institutional structures can gradually become goals in themselves.
I care much less about which organizational model delivers a service than whether people can access a good one.
In healthcare, patients should be able to receive appropriate treatment within a reasonable period. Doctors and nurses should spend less time on paperwork. Qualified nurses, pharmacists, and other professionals should be able to perform more routine work where it is safe. Health information should move with the patient.
Private providers can add capacity where they perform well, but private is not automatically better. They can cherry-pick profitable procedures or fragment care. Measure the results.
Waiting times. Outcomes. Cost. Access.
Education deserves the same willingness to question old structures.
Reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, and reasoning should remain fundamental. But I would add much more practical education: personal finance, debt, saving, investing, taxes, contracts, basic economics, entrepreneurship, and digital competence.
Vocational education should again become a respected first choice rather than a consolation prize for people who did not attend university.
And yes, I believe parents should have more freedom over how their children are educated, including homeschooling where appropriate, provided children meet clear educational standards and reasonable safeguarding requirements.
The point is not that one model is correct for everyone.
The point is to stop defending institutions merely because they already exist in their current form.
Europe is aging.
Immigration can slow workforce decline, but it cannot permanently solve an aging population. Today’s young migrant eventually grows old too.
Governments also cannot manufacture children through a tax credit or subsidy.
But they can ask why so many young adults who say they want families postpone having children, have fewer than they wanted, or decide they cannot afford them at all.
Housing matters enormously. So does childcare. Income matters. Taxes matter. Stable relationships and culture matter too, even though governments have far less ability to influence those.
Employment security also matters, but I do not mean guaranteeing a particular job for life. I mean knowing that losing one job does not destroy your finances, your healthcare, or your ability to recover.
Europe should also embrace automation and AI much more aggressively.
If the working-age population shrinks, there are two broad ways to maintain output: continually import more workers or enable the workers you already have to produce more.
Europe will probably need some of both.
But immigration should not become an excuse to avoid asking why family formation among Europeans themselves has become so difficult.
This may be the most uncomfortable part of the letter.
I believe democratic responsibility has an order.
A Dutch government is primarily accountable to people in the Netherlands. A French government is primarily accountable to people in France. European institutions derive their legitimacy and resources from Europeans.
That does not mean ignoring the rest of the world.
Europe should trade, cooperate, maintain alliances, defend itself, and help when terrible things happen.
Foreign conflicts can affect European security, economic, and strategic interests. But that does not mean governments should treat one official account of their causes, responsibilities, and possible outcomes as the unquestioned starting point.
Especially in matters of war, citizens should be able to ask: what do we actually know, which interests are involved, what alternatives were considered, what does our involvement cost, what are the risks of escalation, and what does success mean?
Official explanations should never be the end of the debate.
If Europe commits itself militarily, financially, or politically, that involvement should have clear objectives, limits, and review points. Support without a clear objective or endpoint is not a strategy.
Europe cannot stop every war. It cannot solve every humanitarian crisis. It cannot accommodate everybody who wants to live there. It cannot finance every international priority indefinitely. And it cannot solve global environmental problems by itself.
Governments have to choose.
Before taking on another major responsibility, they should know whether the foundations at home are working.
Can people find somewhere to live? Can they see a doctor? Are children learning? Can somebody start a business without spending months fighting bureaucracy? Are public spaces safe? Does infrastructure work? Can workers keep enough of what they earn? Can farmers plan for the future?
Those questions are not selfish because they are domestic.
They are where democratic legitimacy begins.
A prosperous, confident Europe can be extraordinarily generous. A Europe that gradually loses prosperity, trust, and social cohesion eventually loses the ability to help anybody.
I do not think Europe’s decline is inevitable.
You still have almost everything required to prosper: capital, knowledge, universities, entrepreneurs, infrastructure, workers, engineers, scientists, farmers, strong institutions, and hundreds of millions of relatively wealthy consumers.
But I think you have lost some confidence in ordinary people.
Too often, when something goes wrong, the instinct is to regulate more, monitor more, centralize more, subsidize more, or create another institution responsible for managing the consequences.
Sometimes that is necessary.
Too often it has become automatic.
My deeper concern is not one regulation, one migration policy, one climate target, or one government program.
It is the gradual movement of agency away from people.
Maybe Europe does not need another institution to put it back on its feet. Maybe it needs to trust its people enough to let them help.
Give people more room to work, build, own, create, raise families, make mistakes, recover from them, choose, and participate in the decisions that shape their lives. Bring government closer to people, not further away.
Government has an essential role in making that possible. But government should remain a tool people use to organize society, not become a system society exists to satisfy.
I also know that some of what I have written here will provoke disagreement.
Good.
I am not writing this because I expect everybody to agree with me. And I am not interested in dividing people into the enlightened and the ignorant, left and right, good and bad.
Europe already has enough of that.
I would rather have a serious argument about proportionality, priorities, freedom, responsibility, and what kind of society Europeans actually want to live in.
I may be wrong about individual policies. You may think I underestimate climate risk, overestimate the costs of migration, or place too much confidence in markets and individual choice. Those are arguments worth having.
What I do not want is a society in which those arguments are considered illegitimate before they have even begun.
For years, European governments have often responded to new problems by adding something: another rule, another program, another subsidy, another administrative process, another obligation.
Maybe the next chapter should include removing some things too.
Before every substantial new policy, I would ask one question:
Does this make it easier or harder for an ordinary person to build a good life in Europe?
That question is personal for me too. Five years ago, I chose to leave because I believed I could give my family a better life elsewhere. I do not know whether I will ever return. My children sometimes talk about living in Europe when they are older, and perhaps one day they will.
If they do, I hope they find a Europe that once again feels confident about its future: a place where working hard creates opportunity, where building a home and a family feels achievable, where people have room to create and make their own choices, and where government listens to the people it serves.
Maybe Europe will get back on its feet without any help from me. That would be fine. This letter is the small contribution I can make from where I am.
I left Europe, but I never stopped wanting it to succeed.
Jordi Buskermolen
Mérida, MexicoThis letter comes from my personal connection to Europe.
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